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144144Democracy Now! - Iraqen-USDemocracy Now! - IraqAfter Iraq-Syria Takeover, the Inside Story of How ISIL Destroyed Al-Qaeda from Withinhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/11/after_iraq_syria_takeover_the_inside
tag:democracynow.org,2015-06-11:en/story/691ca2 NERMEEN SHAIKH : A year ago this month, fighters from the Islamic State declared they had established a caliphate in the territories they controlled in Iraq and Syria. Since then, the Islamic State has continued to grow, building affiliates from Afghanistan to West Africa while recruiting new members from across the globe. In response, President Obama has sent thousands of U.S. troops back to Iraq. The deployment of another 450 troops was announced on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the rise of the Islamic State has reshaped the jihadist movement in the region, essentially bringing al-Qaeda to the brink of collapse.
AMY GOODMAN : According to a new investigation by The Guardian , the Islamic State has successfully launched a coup against al-Qaeda to destroy it from within. The Islamic State began as al-Qaeda&#8217;s branch in the heart of the Middle East but was excommunicated in 2014 after disobeying commands from al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. While the Islamic State has since flourished, The Guardian reports al-Zawahiri is now largely cut off from his commanders and keeping the group afloat through little more than appeals to loyalty. The Guardian also reports the United States has been slow to grasp the implications of al-Qaeda&#8217;s decline and possible collapse.
Joining us now from London is Shiv Malik, lead author on The Guardian investigation headlined &quot;How Isis Crippled al-Qaida.&quot; Shiv, if you can talk about, well, just how ISIS crippled al-Qaeda and your meeting in Jordan with the leading al-Qaeda theorists?
SHIV MALIK : Yeah. So, this has been going on for a while now, for a couple of years at least. And, you know, from the outside, we get little pictures. You hear these skirmishes that have been going on. You hear that sort of ISIS has killed a few other members of al-Qaeda, the sort of Syrian branch of al-Qaeda called Jabhat al-Nusra. There was a big conflagration in January last year, in 2014, in which thousands died.
But the real inside story of this comes from just actually a few players, really. And thankfully, we were able to interview Muhammad al-Maqdisi and another guy called Abu Qatada. To British people, he&#8217;s quite famous because he lived here for many years, and the home secretary here—actually, various home secretaries tried to deport him over a process of almost 10 years to Jordan to face terrorism charges. He was acquitted of those eventually. But he&#8217;s been described as kind of al-Qaeda&#8217;s spiritual—or Bin Laden&#8217;s spiritual ambassador in Europe. And Maqdisi, who is actually little known in the West, is actually even more senior than Qatada in regards to al-Qaeda.
And what they&#8217;ve been doing is, actually, behind the scenes, kind of negotiating between al-Qaeda and ISIS , trying to bring these people back to the table. And they finally gave up about sort of, you know, six months ago or thereabouts, because they all used to be one family. It used to be, if you want, the al-Qaeda family. So, that&#8217;s the story that we&#8217;ve got from them, which is this process, as I said, of about over two years of how ISIS has sort of risen to take the mantle of the leadership of the sort of global jihad, if you want, from al-Qaeda.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, Shiv Malik, could you explain how you came to research this story? And you went to Jordan to speak to these two figures. Could you talk a little about that?
SHIV MALIK : Yeah. So, Maqdisi and Qatada kind of, for obvious reasons, both have—well, Maqdisi also has sort of terrorism convictions, but they&#8217;re in and out of prison all the time, as you can imagine—Maqdisi often without charge. He&#8217;s just sort of taken by Jordanian security services and sort of locked up. But he was released in February again, and so we went to visit him then, sort of soon afterwards. And then we carried on interviewing him. We&#8217;ve got—you know, there&#8217;s a big team of investigators that were on this piece, and so we continued to interview him and ask him questions.
And actually, when you meet him, you know, you sort of—you don&#8217;t really know what you&#8217;re going to get. This guy is the spiritual godfather of al-Qaeda, and Zawahiri counts him as a personal friend. He&#8217;s been mentor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He mentored him, and Zarqawi is the founder of ISIS , if you want. He mentored him for five years in prison, and Zarqawi then went on to, of course, create absolute havoc in Iraq in 2003, beheading people, massacring Shias by the thousands. And so, you don&#8217;t know what to expect. But when you meet him, he&#8217;s sort of—he&#8217;s this very interesting guy. I mean, he&#8217;s completely energetic, enthusiastic. He&#8217;s almost childlike in his enthusiasm for talking about almost anything. His hands flail all over the place. He&#8217;s rake thin. And he&#8217;s got a real sense of humor, which, you know, sort of throws you, and you don&#8217;t really know what to do.
Qatada, on the other hand, is this very large, lumbering man, and he&#8217;s very tall, and physically, in that sense, quite intimidating. It&#8217;s quite hard to grasp just how big this guy is from sort of the pictures that we have. And he speaks very quietly, and he almost sounds like Marlon Brando in The Godfather , you know, but sort of slightly higher-pitched. So it&#8217;s this sort of—and he pauses a lot. So they kind of make an odd pair, if you want.
But we went to speak to them, and they were both very upset. They&#8217;ve spent—their life&#8217;s work has basically been bringing jihadis under one banner. And for that, that was al-Qaeda. So al-Qaeda is not just an organization, which we know has been incredibly ruthless and bloody and plotting away at terrorism events around the globe; they&#8217;re also an idea. And the idea is sort of twofold. First, it&#8217;s—and we often look at this from a Western perspective, but, you know, of course, these guys have their own agency. So, the first part of this is that al-Qaeda was created as a kind of a failure, a response to the failures of kind of localist jihadist issues going back to the &#39;80s and &#8217;90s, and Algeria, for example, being a failure, and Afghanistan. So the idea was that they would all come together under one banner, and they would attack, and they would put their focus on America, because they said this is—the theory was that, look, attack the snake&#39;s head, if you want. And so that&#8217;s what they did. And they planned against that, obviously, culminating most visciously in September the 11th. And these scholars then—this was their idea there.
But the second part of this is they&#8217;re also a vanguard for a revolutionary idea of setting up the caliphate. And those who are au fait with kind of what happened with the communist movements will know about vanguardist organization, but the idea is that they educate the people to accepting the notion of an Islamic state, and then they eventually, one day, set it up. So this is what al-Qaeda has meant for these two scholars.
And ISIS have been quietly bubbling away. They&#8217;ve alway been—they&#8217;ve been a branch of—they&#8217;ve been al-Qaeda&#8217;s branch in Iraq. That&#8217;s the best way to think of them. And they had been, for a very long time, the most troublesome branch, as well—kind of don&#8217;t listen to orders, don&#8217;t take criticism very well, won&#8217;t listen to anyone. And bin Laden had problems with them, and we know that from the Abbottabad documents that have sort of come out, the sort of tranche of documents that were seized when Americans went in and killed bin Laden in 2011 in May. But we also know this from, then, subsequently, what&#8217;s happened and what Zawahiri has said publicly. So they&#8217;ve been very troublesome.
And at one point, the sort of the peace was broken, if you want, when ISIS sent—when the Syrian civil war started, they sent some people into Syria, and they said, &quot;You know, we&#8217;ll grab some turf. We&#8217;ll start a branch there.&quot; And the people who then went on to lead that, sort of bunch of rebels fighting against Assad, went on to become incredibly powerful. And ISIS in Iraq say, &quot;Ah, we&#8217;re a bit threatened by this. I&#8217;ll tell you what. We&#8217;ll just create a merger.&quot; And it&#8217;s that point that—it was basically a bit of a power play over territory and patches of land and who would control what. Zawahiri steps in and says, &quot;Actually, let&#8217;s just put things back to where they were.&quot; Baghdadi steps up and says, &quot;No way. You know what? We&#8217;re not going to do this. We don&#8217;t need you, old man in Waziristan, anymore. And if you tell us otherwise, we&#8217;re just not going to listen to you.&quot;
So, that&#8217;s what starts a giant civil war, basically, and eventually it gets to the point where, as I said, in January 2014 just all hell breaks loose. And jihadis just keep killing jihadis, and veterans from al-Qaeda are killed, and people in ISIS are killed, and it&#8217;s incredibly messy. And it&#8217;s almost impossible to keep track of. And we spent a very long time trying to piece together, bit by bit, which villages ISIS were taking over, who was getting killed when, who was saying what. And at one point, they even killed—ISIS ended up killing Zawahiri&#8217;s emissary, which he had sent over to make peace. They killed him, too. So it was incredibly vicious and incredibly bloody. In step with scholars, which is—
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Well, very soon, Shiv Malik—
SHIV MALIK : Yes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Very soon after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, there was already a split, a falling out between Maqdisi, whom you spoke to, and al-Zarqawi, who was initial leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the so-called—the precursor to ISIS . So could you talk about what the ideological divisions are between these two groups and, in particular, focus on what their position came to be on the recruitment of former Baath leaders within this movement, the position of ISIS versus the position of al-Qaeda, what it had been and what it became?
SHIV MALIK : So, I mean, in terms of ideological divisions, the big division came when ISIS set up this caliphate. They declared this caliphate. And I said, you know, al-Qaeda is supposed to be the vanguardist organization. And there they are, ISIS , setting up a caliphate and saying, &quot;You know, the revolution is complete. We&#8217;ve done it. We set up the caliphate. We&#8217;ve got there finally.&quot; And that has also made, in that sense, al-Qaeda a bit redundant. They managed, ISIS , to hold onto this caliphate for a whole year now, or almost—we&#8217;re coming up to the anniversary in a couple of weeks—which is remarkable. So that&#8217;s certainly one ideological difference. And with that, they&#8217;ve been able to—ISIS have been able to capture the imagination of young radicals, who would already be susceptible to this, and also the funders. So the money and the men, the prestige is all going to ISIS at this point in time. And al-Qaeda therefore is being drained of all of that, of that pool. So they&#8217;ve been really left on the back foot.
Now, these scholars are saying—Maqdisi and Qatada, that we spoke to, have said, &quot;Look, actually, these guys aren&#8217;t the real deal.&quot; And that&#8217;s why they sort of stepped in. They said, &quot;Look, we&#8217;re the elite scholarship. You know, if you&#8217;re more than gangsters, and you&#8217;re ideologues, then you&#8217;ve got to listen to us, because we&#8217;re the people who wrote the books.&quot; So, they stepped in, and ISIS basically completely—there was a long period of time when they thought maybe there can be some reconciliation. Baghdadi actually wrote a letter to Maqdisi and said, &quot;Please, come join us in the caliphate. Come see what it&#8217;s like. Judge for yourself.&quot; And there was some suggestion from these two, when we interviewed them, that if they went, they&#8217;d never come back: They might get killed. So they&#8217;re obviously frightened, as well. And there was a situation, as well, a security situation in Jordan, where, again, these two might get bumped off because they&#8217;d been so critical of ISIS . You know, someone might just appear masked and gun them down. So, there&#8217;s been that, as I said, that fraticide, but ultimately, they want the same thing in the end, and these are, to Western observers certainly, very petty ideological differences.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, Shiv Malik, this may sound like a far-out question, but could you see any scenario in which the U.S. would side with al-Qaeda against ISIS ?
SHIV MALIK : Not really. And they shouldn&#8217;t. I mean, you know, it&#8217;s not like al-Qaeda are friends of America by any means. In fact, they&#8217;re still very much focused on attacking America. And that&#8217;s how they—you know, this is where they find their niche now. If their marketplace has been closed down for them by ISIS , some of it anyway, then they—again, they reformulate themselves on doubling what they did before, if you want, which is to attack the West and gain, if you want, prestige from that, to appeal to their own base. And that should be very worrying for the West.
Now, that doesn&#8217;t mean that America should simply carry on focusing on al-Qaeda and not regear its intelligence machine, its military machine towards ISIS . You know, if you were wondering what&#8217;s a greater threat, ISIS certainly is. And the reason is, is because, as I mentioned before, they have a patch of land. It&#8217;s actually a very sizable territory with a massive city of a couple million people, in Mosul, in Iraq, which they&#8217;re in charge of. And this is very worrying, because this idea is now real. They&#8217;ve managed to say to the world, &quot;Actually, we&#8217;ve held it for a year. We&#8217;ve even expanded it by taking Ramadi, which is another major city in Iraq. And look, you know, clearly God&#8217;s on our side.&quot; You know, these people are, in that sense, sort of people of faith and religion. And if the caliphate carries on existing, it must be that we&#8217;re on the winning side. So, America should regear. And what they&#8217;ve announced already, or what seems to have been reported, was, you know, they&#8217;re going to send a few other thousand people over to Iraq, or a couple hundred other extra advisers to advise the Iraqi army. I&#8217;m not sure if that will be enough, but we&#8217;ll see.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And before we conclude, Shiv Malik, could you talk about the significance of the civil war in Syria in precipitating the self-proclaimed Islamic State&#8217;s rise and the collapse or near collapse of al-Qaeda?
SHIV MALIK : Yeah, I mean, the civil war has allowed for chaos, and in that sense, you know, these people are sort of like gangsters or sort of drug dealers. They need turf, and they need turf so they can get money and, as I said, recruits. And it&#8217;s like a business in that sense. It has to keep itself going. And Syria provided that field. Once the revolution broke out, Assad then brutally put people down and killed them and slaughtered them. And then people decided to arm themselves, and that created the chaos. Then, in stepped—as I said, you know, in stepped ISIS , who were over the border, or ISI , as they were known then, and sent people over to sort of take advantage of all of this. So, in that sense, they have taken advantage completely of what&#8217;s been going on, but that&#8217;s not to say that people shouldn&#8217;t want to resist Assad. They should, you know? He&#8217;s been using chemical weapons and certainly chlorine bombs on his population. He&#8217;s a despicable dictator. So the question—you know, it&#8217;s a complete mess. And someone at some point is going to have to step in, whether it&#8217;s European and American forces or something else, and sort that out. But until then, as I said, ISIS will certainly take advantage of it. And they&#8217;re doing very well out of it financially.
AMY GOODMAN : We want to thank you, Shiv Malik, for joining us, investigative reporter at The Guardian , lead author of the new in-depth report , &quot;How Isis Crippled al-Qaida: The Inside Story of the Coup That Has Brought the World&#8217;s Most Feared Terrorist Network to the Brink of Collapse.&quot; Shiv was speaking to us in London. We&#8217;ll link to that piece at democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Texas. Major anti-choice actions are taking place there. Stay with us. NERMEENSHAIKH: A year ago this month, fighters from the Islamic State declared they had established a caliphate in the territories they controlled in Iraq and Syria. Since then, the Islamic State has continued to grow, building affiliates from Afghanistan to West Africa while recruiting new members from across the globe. In response, President Obama has sent thousands of U.S. troops back to Iraq. The deployment of another 450 troops was announced on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the rise of the Islamic State has reshaped the jihadist movement in the region, essentially bringing al-Qaeda to the brink of collapse.

AMYGOODMAN: According to a new investigation by The Guardian, the Islamic State has successfully launched a coup against al-Qaeda to destroy it from within. The Islamic State began as al-Qaeda’s branch in the heart of the Middle East but was excommunicated in 2014 after disobeying commands from al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. While the Islamic State has since flourished, The Guardian reports al-Zawahiri is now largely cut off from his commanders and keeping the group afloat through little more than appeals to loyalty. The Guardian also reports the United States has been slow to grasp the implications of al-Qaeda’s decline and possible collapse.

Joining us now from London is Shiv Malik, lead author on The Guardianinvestigation headlined "How Isis Crippled al-Qaida." Shiv, if you can talk about, well, just how ISIS crippled al-Qaeda and your meeting in Jordan with the leading al-Qaeda theorists?

SHIVMALIK: Yeah. So, this has been going on for a while now, for a couple of years at least. And, you know, from the outside, we get little pictures. You hear these skirmishes that have been going on. You hear that sort of ISIS has killed a few other members of al-Qaeda, the sort of Syrian branch of al-Qaeda called Jabhat al-Nusra. There was a big conflagration in January last year, in 2014, in which thousands died.

But the real inside story of this comes from just actually a few players, really. And thankfully, we were able to interview Muhammad al-Maqdisi and another guy called Abu Qatada. To British people, he’s quite famous because he lived here for many years, and the home secretary here—actually, various home secretaries tried to deport him over a process of almost 10 years to Jordan to face terrorism charges. He was acquitted of those eventually. But he’s been described as kind of al-Qaeda’s spiritual—or Bin Laden’s spiritual ambassador in Europe. And Maqdisi, who is actually little known in the West, is actually even more senior than Qatada in regards to al-Qaeda.

And what they’ve been doing is, actually, behind the scenes, kind of negotiating between al-Qaeda and ISIS, trying to bring these people back to the table. And they finally gave up about sort of, you know, six months ago or thereabouts, because they all used to be one family. It used to be, if you want, the al-Qaeda family. So, that’s the story that we’ve got from them, which is this process, as I said, of about over two years of how ISIS has sort of risen to take the mantle of the leadership of the sort of global jihad, if you want, from al-Qaeda.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, Shiv Malik, could you explain how you came to research this story? And you went to Jordan to speak to these two figures. Could you talk a little about that?

SHIVMALIK: Yeah. So, Maqdisi and Qatada kind of, for obvious reasons, both have—well, Maqdisi also has sort of terrorism convictions, but they’re in and out of prison all the time, as you can imagine—Maqdisi often without charge. He’s just sort of taken by Jordanian security services and sort of locked up. But he was released in February again, and so we went to visit him then, sort of soon afterwards. And then we carried on interviewing him. We’ve got—you know, there’s a big team of investigators that were on this piece, and so we continued to interview him and ask him questions.

And actually, when you meet him, you know, you sort of—you don’t really know what you’re going to get. This guy is the spiritual godfather of al-Qaeda, and Zawahiri counts him as a personal friend. He’s been mentor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He mentored him, and Zarqawi is the founder of ISIS, if you want. He mentored him for five years in prison, and Zarqawi then went on to, of course, create absolute havoc in Iraq in 2003, beheading people, massacring Shias by the thousands. And so, you don’t know what to expect. But when you meet him, he’s sort of—he’s this very interesting guy. I mean, he’s completely energetic, enthusiastic. He’s almost childlike in his enthusiasm for talking about almost anything. His hands flail all over the place. He’s rake thin. And he’s got a real sense of humor, which, you know, sort of throws you, and you don’t really know what to do.

Qatada, on the other hand, is this very large, lumbering man, and he’s very tall, and physically, in that sense, quite intimidating. It’s quite hard to grasp just how big this guy is from sort of the pictures that we have. And he speaks very quietly, and he almost sounds like Marlon Brando in The Godfather, you know, but sort of slightly higher-pitched. So it’s this sort of—and he pauses a lot. So they kind of make an odd pair, if you want.

But we went to speak to them, and they were both very upset. They’ve spent—their life’s work has basically been bringing jihadis under one banner. And for that, that was al-Qaeda. So al-Qaeda is not just an organization, which we know has been incredibly ruthless and bloody and plotting away at terrorism events around the globe; they’re also an idea. And the idea is sort of twofold. First, it’s—and we often look at this from a Western perspective, but, you know, of course, these guys have their own agency. So, the first part of this is that al-Qaeda was created as a kind of a failure, a response to the failures of kind of localist jihadist issues going back to the '80s and ’90s, and Algeria, for example, being a failure, and Afghanistan. So the idea was that they would all come together under one banner, and they would attack, and they would put their focus on America, because they said this is—the theory was that, look, attack the snake's head, if you want. And so that’s what they did. And they planned against that, obviously, culminating most visciously in September the 11th. And these scholars then—this was their idea there.

But the second part of this is they’re also a vanguard for a revolutionary idea of setting up the caliphate. And those who are au fait with kind of what happened with the communist movements will know about vanguardist organization, but the idea is that they educate the people to accepting the notion of an Islamic state, and then they eventually, one day, set it up. So this is what al-Qaeda has meant for these two scholars.

And ISIS have been quietly bubbling away. They’ve alway been—they’ve been a branch of—they’ve been al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq. That’s the best way to think of them. And they had been, for a very long time, the most troublesome branch, as well—kind of don’t listen to orders, don’t take criticism very well, won’t listen to anyone. And bin Laden had problems with them, and we know that from the Abbottabad documents that have sort of come out, the sort of tranche of documents that were seized when Americans went in and killed bin Laden in 2011 in May. But we also know this from, then, subsequently, what’s happened and what Zawahiri has said publicly. So they’ve been very troublesome.

And at one point, the sort of the peace was broken, if you want, when ISIS sent—when the Syrian civil war started, they sent some people into Syria, and they said, "You know, we’ll grab some turf. We’ll start a branch there." And the people who then went on to lead that, sort of bunch of rebels fighting against Assad, went on to become incredibly powerful. And ISIS in Iraq say, "Ah, we’re a bit threatened by this. I’ll tell you what. We’ll just create a merger." And it’s that point that—it was basically a bit of a power play over territory and patches of land and who would control what. Zawahiri steps in and says, "Actually, let’s just put things back to where they were." Baghdadi steps up and says, "No way. You know what? We’re not going to do this. We don’t need you, old man in Waziristan, anymore. And if you tell us otherwise, we’re just not going to listen to you."

So, that’s what starts a giant civil war, basically, and eventually it gets to the point where, as I said, in January 2014 just all hell breaks loose. And jihadis just keep killing jihadis, and veterans from al-Qaeda are killed, and people in ISIS are killed, and it’s incredibly messy. And it’s almost impossible to keep track of. And we spent a very long time trying to piece together, bit by bit, which villages ISIS were taking over, who was getting killed when, who was saying what. And at one point, they even killed—ISIS ended up killing Zawahiri’s emissary, which he had sent over to make peace. They killed him, too. So it was incredibly vicious and incredibly bloody. In step with scholars, which is—

NERMEENSHAIKH: Well, very soon, Shiv Malik—

SHIVMALIK: Yes.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Very soon after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, there was already a split, a falling out between Maqdisi, whom you spoke to, and al-Zarqawi, who was initial leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the so-called—the precursor to ISIS. So could you talk about what the ideological divisions are between these two groups and, in particular, focus on what their position came to be on the recruitment of former Baath leaders within this movement, the position of ISIS versus the position of al-Qaeda, what it had been and what it became?

SHIVMALIK: So, I mean, in terms of ideological divisions, the big division came when ISIS set up this caliphate. They declared this caliphate. And I said, you know, al-Qaeda is supposed to be the vanguardist organization. And there they are, ISIS, setting up a caliphate and saying, "You know, the revolution is complete. We’ve done it. We set up the caliphate. We’ve got there finally." And that has also made, in that sense, al-Qaeda a bit redundant. They managed, ISIS, to hold onto this caliphate for a whole year now, or almost—we’re coming up to the anniversary in a couple of weeks—which is remarkable. So that’s certainly one ideological difference. And with that, they’ve been able to—ISIS have been able to capture the imagination of young radicals, who would already be susceptible to this, and also the funders. So the money and the men, the prestige is all going to ISIS at this point in time. And al-Qaeda therefore is being drained of all of that, of that pool. So they’ve been really left on the back foot.

Now, these scholars are saying—Maqdisi and Qatada, that we spoke to, have said, "Look, actually, these guys aren’t the real deal." And that’s why they sort of stepped in. They said, "Look, we’re the elite scholarship. You know, if you’re more than gangsters, and you’re ideologues, then you’ve got to listen to us, because we’re the people who wrote the books." So, they stepped in, and ISIS basically completely—there was a long period of time when they thought maybe there can be some reconciliation. Baghdadi actually wrote a letter to Maqdisi and said, "Please, come join us in the caliphate. Come see what it’s like. Judge for yourself." And there was some suggestion from these two, when we interviewed them, that if they went, they’d never come back: They might get killed. So they’re obviously frightened, as well. And there was a situation, as well, a security situation in Jordan, where, again, these two might get bumped off because they’d been so critical of ISIS. You know, someone might just appear masked and gun them down. So, there’s been that, as I said, that fraticide, but ultimately, they want the same thing in the end, and these are, to Western observers certainly, very petty ideological differences.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, Shiv Malik, this may sound like a far-out question, but could you see any scenario in which the U.S. would side with al-Qaeda against ISIS?

SHIVMALIK: Not really. And they shouldn’t. I mean, you know, it’s not like al-Qaeda are friends of America by any means. In fact, they’re still very much focused on attacking America. And that’s how they—you know, this is where they find their niche now. If their marketplace has been closed down for them by ISIS, some of it anyway, then they—again, they reformulate themselves on doubling what they did before, if you want, which is to attack the West and gain, if you want, prestige from that, to appeal to their own base. And that should be very worrying for the West.

Now, that doesn’t mean that America should simply carry on focusing on al-Qaeda and not regear its intelligence machine, its military machine towards ISIS. You know, if you were wondering what’s a greater threat, ISIS certainly is. And the reason is, is because, as I mentioned before, they have a patch of land. It’s actually a very sizable territory with a massive city of a couple million people, in Mosul, in Iraq, which they’re in charge of. And this is very worrying, because this idea is now real. They’ve managed to say to the world, "Actually, we’ve held it for a year. We’ve even expanded it by taking Ramadi, which is another major city in Iraq. And look, you know, clearly God’s on our side." You know, these people are, in that sense, sort of people of faith and religion. And if the caliphate carries on existing, it must be that we’re on the winning side. So, America should regear. And what they’ve announced already, or what seems to have been reported, was, you know, they’re going to send a few other thousand people over to Iraq, or a couple hundred other extra advisers to advise the Iraqi army. I’m not sure if that will be enough, but we’ll see.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And before we conclude, Shiv Malik, could you talk about the significance of the civil war in Syria in precipitating the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s rise and the collapse or near collapse of al-Qaeda?

SHIVMALIK: Yeah, I mean, the civil war has allowed for chaos, and in that sense, you know, these people are sort of like gangsters or sort of drug dealers. They need turf, and they need turf so they can get money and, as I said, recruits. And it’s like a business in that sense. It has to keep itself going. And Syria provided that field. Once the revolution broke out, Assad then brutally put people down and killed them and slaughtered them. And then people decided to arm themselves, and that created the chaos. Then, in stepped—as I said, you know, in stepped ISIS, who were over the border, or ISI, as they were known then, and sent people over to sort of take advantage of all of this. So, in that sense, they have taken advantage completely of what’s been going on, but that’s not to say that people shouldn’t want to resist Assad. They should, you know? He’s been using chemical weapons and certainly chlorine bombs on his population. He’s a despicable dictator. So the question—you know, it’s a complete mess. And someone at some point is going to have to step in, whether it’s European and American forces or something else, and sort that out. But until then, as I said, ISIS will certainly take advantage of it. And they’re doing very well out of it financially.

AMYGOODMAN: We want to thank you, Shiv Malik, for joining us, investigative reporter at The Guardian, lead author of the new in-depth report, "How Isis Crippled al-Qaida: The Inside Story of the Coup That Has Brought the World’s Most Feared Terrorist Network to the Brink of Collapse." Shiv was speaking to us in London. We’ll link to that piece at democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Texas. Major anti-choice actions are taking place there. Stay with us.

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Thu, 11 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400War for Decades to Come? 1 Year After ISIL Advance, U.S. Could Send Hundreds More Troops to Iraqhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/10/war_for_decades_to_come_1
tag:democracynow.org,2015-06-10:en/story/e80fa5 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Obama administration is considering a plan to increase the U.S. presence in Iraq by sending 400 to 500 more military personnel as well as establishing a new military base in Anbar province. The United States already has about 3,000 troops, including trainers and advisers, in Iraq. The administration is describing the new military personnel as advisers who will help train Iraqi forces in an attempt to retake the city of Ramadi, which fell to the self-described Islamic State last month. Plans to retake Mosul may be pushed off until next year.
The move comes just days after President Obama acknowledged the U.S. does not yet have a, quote, &quot;complete strategy&quot; to deal with ISIL , which has seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria. It was a year ago this week when Islamic State fighters seized Mosul, Iraq&#8217;s second largest city. Today the city remains in ISIL&#8217;s hands. Advisers close to the White House say it could take decades to defeat ISIL . At the recent U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar, retired Marine General John Allen said, quote, &quot;This will be a long campaign. Defeating Daesh&#8217;s ideology will likely take a generation or more,&quot; he said, using the Arabic name for ISIL .
AMY GOODMAN : Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders is reporting Iraq is now facing its biggest humanitarian emergency in a generation. Almost three million people have fled war-torn areas of Iraq controlled by the Islamic State. The United Nations estimates 8.2 million Iraqis, nearly 25 percent of the population, will need some kind of humanitarian help this year.
To talk more about the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, we&#8217;re joined by two guests. With us here in New York, Malcolm Nance, a retired Arabic-speaking U.S. counterterrorism intelligence officer and combat veteran who first worked in Iraq in 1987. He&#8217;s the author of several books, including The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014 . His new piece for The Intercept is called &quot; ISIS Forces That Now Control Ramadi are Ex-Baathist Saddam Loyalists.&quot;
And joining us from London is Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent , just back from reporting in Iraq and Syria. His latest book, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution . His most recent article on Iraq is headlined &quot;War with Isis: As the militant threat grows, so does the West&#8217;s self-deception.&quot;
Let&#8217;s go first right here to Malcolm Nance. Welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about this latest piece you have written. Talk about the political context for the rise and the power of ISIS today.
MALCOLM NANCE : Well, the biggest misperception now—we&#8217;re here on the first anniversary of ISIS taking the city of Mosul, and the biggest misperception that the media has certainly fostered is that ISIS is this new group, which has appeared out of nowhere, they have blitzed across the Middle East, and they have managed to take large swaths of Iraq and Syria—and when, in fact, ISIS is the same group and a conglomeration of groups that we&#8217;ve been fighting since the day we invaded Iraq in 2003.
The piece that I wrote in The Intercept , which was extracted from parts of my book, based on my book, The Terrorists of Iraq , is that the former regime loyalists, almost 100,000 of them, who were all taken away from their jobs by Ambassador Bremer&#8217;s General Order Number Two, went underground and have been fighting us for the last 13 years, nonstop. However, al-Qaeda in Iraq, which started in 2003, as well, has taken over the upper-level management of these groups. And so, what we have is we have, technically, a mega group of all the former regime loyalist insurgent groups, all of the Iraqi Islamic insurgent groups and the foreign fighters who have used Syria as a base camp. And they now are called ISIS .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Malcom Nance, how do you reconcile the fact that the Baathists were largely a secular semi-socialist party when they started, reconciling their ideology and their approach to the world with that of jihadists?
MALCOLM NANCE : Yeah, it&#8217;s very interesting, because the jihadists wouldn&#8217;t even have been in Iraq until after the U.S. invasion, when the communities that were former Baathists—and you&#8217;re right, the Baathists were secularists. The Baath Party was this conglomeration of socialism and secular government that formed into a dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, and also under Hafez al-Assad in Syria. Now—but people who were in Iraq who were Baathists were still Muslims. And as a matter of fact, Saddam Hussein, in the later years, after the U.S. sanctions went into place and after the Iran-Iraq War, started to become more Islamic in name—that is, to co-opt Islam from the people on the street.
The jihadists who came in just after the invasion, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, came in with their own ideology, which is radical, extremist, almost cultish, Islam. But the Baathists understood that these people had the motivation and the combat capacity to do things that the Baathist forces didn&#8217;t have to do, as a matter of fact. You had al-Qaeda in Iraq, who would carry out all the suicide bombings that they wanted. The Baathists would facilitate their entry in from Syria, would build car bombs for them, would gather all of the intelligence against U.S. forces, direct them to it, and they would drive their car bomb into a target—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them over the 12 years that Iraq has been in this turmoil.
But it&#8217;s a marriage of convenience, to a certain extent. Mosul was a Baathist city. Tikrit was a Baathist city. These are the people who ruled Iraq with an iron fist from 1968 to 2003, and they&#8217;re the people who were actually living there. ISIS is just the spearhead of the forces that have now joined them who are Baathists, as well, but ex-Baathist. And they have now taken this patina of the Islamic caliphate on top of that and have sworn their loyalties, but they are the seven-million-person population that owns the place.
AMY GOODMAN : Patrick Cockburn, you&#8217;re the Middle East correspondent for The Independent . You&#8217;re just back from Iraq and Syria. Do you share this assessment of Malcolm Nance?
PATRICK COCKBURN : No. I think that there&#8217;s a big is disconnect between what&#8217;s happening now and what happened when Iraq was ruled by the Baath Party. Remember also, the Baath Party and the Iraqi security forces were supremely unsuccessful militarily in 2003, &#39;91 and before, while Islamic State is very successful. Both come out of the Sunni community, et al. , but I don&#39;t think that the Islamic State is the Baath Party in a new guise.
I mean, one thing that does strike me, though, as very important at the moment, and I&#8217;ve just been in northern Iraq and northern Syria talking to people who have come from Islamic State, is that it&#8217;s recruiting people all the time. It&#8217;s introduced conscription. So, it&#8217;s calling up tens of thousands of young men. So it&#8217;s an expanding organization. And I don&#8217;t think that the outside world, in America or anywhere else, have quite taken on board how tough this organization is and how quickly it&#8217;s growing.
And every so often, we hear accounts that, you know, it&#8217;s got weaker and so forth, but then it takes another city. It took Mosul. It&#8217;s taken Ramadi. It&#8217;s taken Palmyra. And now it&#8217;s getting close to Aleppo, once the biggest city in Syria. And it&#8217;s threatening western Syria. So, this is—people talk about, you know, it&#8217;s going to take so many decades to get rid of this organization, but the problem is much more immediate. This is an expanding organization. It&#8217;s a military machine that combines religious fanaticism with military expertise. And it&#8217;s growing all the time.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Patrick Cockburn, how do you account for this such a fast growth of the organization, especially given the years when there didn&#8217;t seem to be any expansion of the jihadists, especially in Iraq?
PATRICK COCKBURN : Well, it looks to the Sunni community in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni Arabs about 20 percent of Iraqis, about 60 percent of Syrians. When the Syrian uprising took place in 2011, there was a whole big new constituency for them. And militarily, they&#8217;re much better organized and more effective than the other groups in Syria.
And although they&#8217;ve expanded, they still seem to be able to create a real state. I mean, that&#8217;s one of the things that struck me talking to people from there. They&#8217;ve introduced taxation. They&#8217;ve introduced conscription. They&#8217;ve introduced horrible laws restricting women from leaving home without a male relative, and you get beaten if you don&#8217;t do that. You have to wear the niqab covering the whole face, if you&#8217;re a woman. And anybody who opposes them ends up dead very fast. We were talking to the leader of one tribe in Iraq, the Albu Nimr, and 864 of them have been killed since last October. So, this is a savage organization, but it&#8217;s a pretty effective one. And it administers everything. It controls education, you know, even fishing rights in the Euphrates River. They have a whole series of instructions, what you can and cannot do. You can&#8217;t use explosives. You can&#8217;t use poison. So it really does control the area into which it&#8217;s expanded, which is greater than the size of Great Britain, and maybe it has at least six million people in it.
AMY GOODMAN : So your main point of disagreement with Malcolm Nance is simply that, while it may have started with different groups, it is far larger than the Baathists of the past?
PATRICK COCKBURN : It&#8217;s far larger than al-Qaeda was during the—10 years ago or since. It&#8217;s gotten much bigger. You know, the Baathists—if you were a Baathist back then, this is—most of these people are pretty young. You know, if you have to go back to Baathist Iraq, you know, these guys—if all the militants came from there, it would be quite an aging organization. But I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s true. I think there&#8217;s a connection in the leadership. Some of these people come out of the Iraqi security forces. But I think that it&#8217;s developed into a very different type of organization, and, unfortunately, a far more effective one.
AMY GOODMAN : Let&#8217;s get Malcolm Nance&#8217;s response.
MALCOLM NANCE : Well, in some respects, he&#8217;s right. It is a very different organization. It has developed in a different way, and it does have a large quantity of young men. But let&#8217;s not forget history here. If you were a member of the Saddam Fedayeen at age 20 when the United States invaded, you&#8217;d be 35 years old right now, and you would be a mid-level commander with 13 years of extraordinary combat experience under your belt. There were 100,000 Iraqis that we fought when we invaded Iraq. We only killed 6,000 of them in the invasion. That&#8217;s a lot, and it&#8217;s horrific we even did it, but the very fact is, that left almost 90,000 people who were there to fight us during the eight years that we were in combat with them.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq got all of the news during the time that we were fighting. The United States believed that al-Qaeda in Iraq was everyone that we weren&#8217;t fighting. But in fact, we were fighting 30,000 Saddam Fedayeen, 26,000 intelligence agency officers and managers, 6,000 senior Baathist commanders who had Iran-Iraq War experience. These people are the Sunni community of Iraq. They are the men and their children who are the people who own northern and western Iraq. ISIS is just al-Qaeda in Iraq evolved. Once in 2011 Syria fell, that gave them a complete playground, gave them all the lines of communications, weapons, that they could take and use it as a sanctuary to start carving out these areas. But you can&#8217;t carve out Anbar province. You can&#8217;t carve out Nineveh and Dhi Qar without actually co-opting the communities that are in there who turned against them in 2007 during the Iraq Awakening campaign. It&#8217;s just in 2011 they turned back to the people who were going to give them the autonomy they weren&#8217;t getting with the al-Maliki government.
So, yes, it&#8217;s a young organization. I know this organization. I&#8217;ve fought this organization. This organization has tried to kill me. I take it very personally. I see how they operate, and I understand that their tactics, their blitz tactics, are very effective against the Iraqi army, that really doesn&#8217;t want to be where they are. But as they take these communities, like Mosul, that community of Mosul, of course—that community in Mosul are the Sunnis who have always been there and who have ruled Iraq, and they are allowing them to come in.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to come back to this conversation after break. Our guests are Malcolm Nance, a retired U.S. counterterrorism intelligence officer and combat veteran. He&#8217;s here with us in New York, has a piece in The Intercept . And Patrick Cockburn is with us, just back from Iraq and Syria, Middle East correspondent for The Independent . He&#8217;s joining us from London. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : Our guests, Patrick Cockburn in London, just back from Iraq and Syria, Middle East correspondent for The Independent , and Malcolm Nance, here with us in New York, retired U.S. counterterrorism intelligence officer and combat veteran, spent many years in Iraq. Juan?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Malcolm Nance, you alluded to your experience in Iraq, and I wanted to go back to some of that experience, because you were in Iraq as far back as 1987, before the Persian Gulf War even. Could you talk about your experiences, your earliest experiences there? And also, your assessment of the Shia community and the Shia militias and their role in the continuing battle with ISIL ?
MALCOLM NANCE : The missions that I worked in the 1980s, of course, were in support of the Iran-Iraq War. And as you know, we had a deconfliction problem after Iranian aircraft accidentally struck a U.S. Navy warship. So their were deconfliction missions to Iraq and around Iraq and Kuwait.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Deconfliction? What does that mean?
MALCOLM NANCE : Ah, yeah, that&#8217;s—sorry, it&#8217;s a technical term which means that we assist them in not mischaracterizing or misidentifying our warships as Iranian navy ships. They were carrying out airstrikes in the Persian Gulf and destroying Iranian tankers. And so, there was a very early mission to deconflict their aircraft attacks away from U.S. warships.
AMY GOODMAN : And the U.S. was supporting both sides.
MALCOLM NANCE : The United States at that time was technically neutral, but it was in the interest of the United States to facilitate the Saudi and Kuwaiti activities in support of Iraq.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the Shia, and your experience with the Shia militias, as well?
MALCOLM NANCE : Well, I got involved with the Shia very early on. Right after the Operation Desert Storm, I operated in southern Iraq around the areas south of Basra, Umm Qasr, al-Nasiriyah, all these areas down there. And this is where the Shia uprising took place, because the Iraqis, of course, they know their people. And they managed to coordinate and trick General Schwarzkopf into allowing them to use helicopters, and as the Shia of Basra rose up, they used the terms of our peace treaty to carry out attacks on them. And I spent quite a bit of time in Basra, as a matter of fact.
Right now what you&#8217;re seeing with the Iraqi Shia militias, the Hashid Shaabi, these popular mobilization units, they call themselves, is very interesting, because, you know, throughout my entire time in Iraq, we fought the Shia. The U.S. Army fought the Shia militias of the Jaish al-Mahdi, which was Muqtada al-Sadr&#8217;s organization. And I would have people say to me, &quot;If Sheikh Sistani tells me or Sheikh al-Sadr tells me to attack the Americans, I have to. I&#8217;m just obligated to do that.&quot; Well, right now, because of the failure of the Iraqi army, that is how the southern—the Shia of Iraq, who I believe are about 80 percent of the population of Iraq, are mobilizing now in a capacity that they wouldn&#8217;t do if they were an Iraqi army unit. They are essentially armed mobs who are going up there and throwing manpower at the ISIS crisis, and with some Iranian support, and just coming in and giving large quantities of manpower to take back cities like Tikrit, Baiji oil refinery. And they believe that they&#8217;re going to Ramadi. But when they go there, they&#8217;re in it for punishment. They&#8217;re not in this in order to maintain the stability of the Shia and Sunni dialogue within Iraq. They are going there to punish the community for bringing ISIS .
AMY GOODMAN : I want to go to comments of your former boss—that&#8217;s right, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld—who told The Times of London, quote, &quot;The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.&quot; He went on to say, quote, &quot;I&#8217;m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories.&quot; Several commentators, including the journalist Bob Woodward, have challenged Rumsfeld&#8217;s recent comments. Seven weeks after the U.S. invasion, Rumsfeld said, quote, &quot;If Iraq—with its size, capabilities, resources and its history—is able to move to the path of representative democracy, however bumpy the road, then the impact in the region and the world could be dramatic. Iraq could conceivably become a model.&quot; I wanted to get Patrick Cockburn&#8217;s response to this, Rumsfeld basically blaming Bush, saying Bush was wrong.
PATRICK COCKBURN : I think, from the beginning, you have to separate two things: the invasion and the occupation. A lot of Iraqis wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, including the Sunni as well as the Shia and the Kurds. But occupation was always—whichever way they tried to play it, was never going to work. The Sunni weren&#8217;t going to accept it, because they had been the dominant community. The Shia wanted to be the dominant community. They&#8217;re about 60 percent of Iraqis, Shia Arabs. And they didn&#8217;t want the U.S. to be the dominant power. And these, of course, were connected, got support from Iran and Syria, because at that time various people in Washington were saying, &quot;Baghdad today, Tehran and Damascus tomorrow.&quot; So the occupation was always going to capsize, whatever way they played it. Since then, there are people saying, &quot;Ah, if we had done something a bit different, it could have worked.&quot; But, you know, all this talk about nation building—one nation doesn&#8217;t build another. Occupying powers normally act in their own interests, which is exactly what happened this time around.
AMY GOODMAN : What&#8217;s the West&#8217;s self-deception here? And what do you think needs to happen, Patrick Cockburn?
PATRICK COCKBURN : Well, talking kind of at the present moment, I think that in Syria and Iraq, the self-deception about the strength of the Islamic State and thinking that it&#8217;s somehow going to implode, or if you leave it alone, it&#8217;s not going to expand, I think don&#8217;t that&#8217;s true. And that&#8217;s proven by events.
I think also there&#8217;s an attempt to rebrand various organizations, like the al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been advancing in northern Syria, and other al-Qaeda-type organizations in the south. And the idea is that somehow this will weaken Assad. What really happens in Syria is that Syrians in Damascus may not much like Assad, but if they&#8217;re connected to the government, not just Christians and Alawites and Shia, but ordinary Sunni, they&#8217;re terrified of the Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra or any of these other extremists taking over. Therefore, they support Assad because they&#8217;ve got no alternative. As soon as there—if there was an alternative, then the things might change. But accepting al—now that the whole Syrian opposition is basically dominated by jihadis and al-Qaeda-type organizations, then this means that Assad will continue to get support.
What they ought to do is bomb Islamic State and the others in all circumstances. They should give priority to fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and they&#8217;re not quite doing that. This idea of arming the Sunni tribe has been around for a long time. Maybe you could do that when al-Qaeda in Iraq was powerful in 2006 and &#39;07, but it was never as powerful as the Islamic State was. It was never a state organization. So, I don&#39;t—you know, you can meet these tribal leaders in Erbil and in Amman. They&#8217;re always promising great things. But what I notice is that there isn&#8217;t much resistance locally in Mosul and Ramadi and these other cities. You don&#8217;t see assassinations and bombings on a wide scale. So I think that that&#8217;s just really a diversionary policy. What I think Washington and its allies should do is give priority, complete priority, to fighting the Islamic State, and they haven&#8217;t really done that yet.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Patrick Cockburn, you&#8217;ve chronicled the little-noted successes of Kurdish forces in battling against ISIL . Could you talk about that and also whether you think that the map of that region of the world has essentially been redrawn permanently as a result of the continuing conflicts between ethnic, political and religious forces over the last 12 years there?
PATRICK COCKBURN : Yeah, I mean, up in—I was in northern Syria, where there are three big Kurdish enclaves. There are about 2.2 million Syrian Kurds, about 10 percent of the population. They&#8217;ve organized themselves pretty well. They are fighting Islamic State. While I was there, they had won a victory at a place called Mount Abdulaziz. They were pretty efficient compared to the Iraqi army or militias, or, indeed, the Syrian army. But so they&#8217;re redrawing it for the moment. But they&#8217;ve benefited, really, from both the Syrian government and Islamic State fighting each other. Neither of them particularly want the Kurds to have a high degree of autonomy there. So in the long term, if either side in Syria wins, whether Islamic State or the Damascus government, that&#8217;s bad news for the Kurds.
But actually, this little state they&#8217;ve created there is perhaps the only successful outcome so far of the 2011 uprising in Syria, in that it&#8217;s gotten rid of the dictatorial regime of Assad, but it hasn&#8217;t been taken over by extreme Islamists. You know, their units of their army are made up of women, that women get 40 percent of the jobs in government, that it&#8217;s a holy—it&#8217;s a secular society. So, you know, its long-term future is debatable. It&#8217;s going to come under a lot of pressure. But the Kurds have a lot of achievements to be proud of there.
AMY GOODMAN : Patrick, last month, The Daily Beast featured an article criticizing your Syria reporting. The author, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad alleges you discount any Syrian nationalist opposition to the Assad regime and that your position is, quote, &quot;Bashar al-Assad is at war with jihadi terrorism; the West has erred in supporting his opponents; and to support the opposition is to support ISIS .&quot; Ahmad goes on to say, quote, &quot;For Cockburn, the situation in Syria is stark: you are with the regime or you are with the terrorists. He is an enthusiast for the war on terror—Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s war on terror. He criticizes the U.S. for excluding from its anti- ISIS coalition &#39;almost all those actually fighting ISIS , including Iran, the Syrian army, the Syrian Kurds and the Shia militias in Iraq.&#39;&quot; Ahmad later accuses you of, quote, &quot;turning a blind eye to the regime&#8217;s ongoing slaughter of civilians.&quot; He says, &quot;He is helped in this by the obtrusive barbarism of ISIS , which uses spectacle in the place of scale to force media attention. ISIS has been a godsend for the regime; it has helped divert attention from its crimes—and regime-friendly journalists have obliged in the deflection.&quot; Patrick Cockburn, your response?
PATRICK COCKBURN : Oh, I get a lot of this. You know, anybody who&#8217;s going to report the Syrian civil war or the Iraqi civil war is going to be accused by one side or the other of being partisan. And what happens in the Middle East, you know, as always happened, but is happening worse now, is when you analyze something and you say this is the situation, that I don&#8217;t think Assad is going to go down, both sides are incredibly brutal in this civil war, then people think you&#8217;re justifying it. They mistake analysis for justification. And I&#8217;ve had that, really, since 2011.
I remember, you know, a rather nice Syrian I knew in Lebanon. I&#8217;d just been in Syria, and I had reported that Assad, for various reasons, was not going to collapse as a lot of media was saying. And as I came back into Syria, I switched on my telephone, and there was the same guy shouting at me, shouting, &quot;Shame on The Independent ! Shame on you!&quot; And it was just that I had reported the situation as I saw it—objectively. But he sort of wished that reality was different, and that&#8217;s why he was shouting at me. And this is the same sort of stuff.
You know, I can understand the passions involved, that both sides commit appalling atrocities, using maximum violence, whatever they have, against civilians. This is true of the Assad government dropping barrel bombs on civilians. It&#8217;s true on the Islamic State. Five, six hundred members of another tribe in Syria were massacred. So I can understand how people feel like that. And it&#8217;s part of the war, so, yeah, I get attacked like that. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll be attacked again. And there&#8217;s nothing much I can really do about that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Malcolm Nance, in closing, I&#8217;d like to ask you, here we are, 12 years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and you&#8217;ve been—you participated in, were involved in much of the regime change that occurred there. What&#8217;s your assessment of the failures of the United States in Iraq and its responsibility for the current situation?
MALCOLM NANCE : To take nothing away from the people who fought that war, that war should never have been fought. I&#8217;m saying this not as someone who writes books; I&#8217;m saying this as an intelligence professional. Invading Iraq after 2003 would have been akin to invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor. It had nothing to do with 9/11. The intelligence did not support it.
I had an incident—not an incident, but an event, which occurred about six months before the invasion, and I met a very high-level intelligence person who was a personal friend of Colin Powell, and he said, &quot;Malcolm, what&#8217;s your assessment of this? They&#8217;re talking about the communications intercept that we got from the Iraqis, that the president had put out to justify part of the war.&quot; And I said, &quot;I&#8217;ve been doing this for decades. I just don&#8217;t see it. The intelligence is not there. We don&#8217;t have direct links to 9/11.&quot; Afghanistan, where I had just come back from, is full of al-Qaeda. They had gone over the mountain to Pakistan. This is a strategic mistake. It&#8217;s done.
And what we need to do now is we have fostered the Iraqi government, we have tried to help them facilitate their growth, we have tried to help democracy, despite what Donald Rumsfeld says. However, we&#8217;re at the point now where the Pandora&#8217;s box is open and we have unleashed a group, which has taken al-Qaeda ideology to its exact extreme. They have carved out exactly what Osama bin Laden had been saying for almost three decades, that he wanted. He wanted an Islamic caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. They have achieved that nominally. They control the roads. They control a few cities. But right now we&#8217;re doing a linear battle using forces we know that can&#8217;t fight, or won&#8217;t fight. Some Iraqi units are brilliant, like the Golden Division, the Iraqi Special Operations Forces. But what we have is we have a situation where we are going to have to take them on.
Now, does it require U.S. troops? I don&#8217;t believe it does. Will it require additional training? Yes. We&#8217;re going to have to create forces which are going to have to go after ISIS where ISIS lives. Right now we&#8217;re trying to take back Ramadi and Mosul, but ISIS doesn&#8217;t live on every road in between there. You have to cut them off, you have to isolate them. The strategic policy of the Pentagon right now is do it from the air. It can&#8217;t be done from the air. We&#8217;re going to have to get a lot more air power and people who are going to go in there and confront them and cut them off.
AMY GOODMAN : So why are you talking about anything different than happened 12 years ago, if you&#8217;re talking about re-engage? Already thousands of troops are there. Now President Obama, probably today, is announcing another 500 troops.
MALCOLM NANCE : The president is in damage-control mode. What we have is flooding here, the uncontrollable flooding in a situation that didn&#8217;t need to be underwater. And so, what he&#8217;s trying to do is incrementally do this so that he doesn&#8217;t have to introduce large forces that will get attacked. If we had stayed in Iraq after 2011, we would be well past the 4,693 dead that we had in that war. We&#8217;d be pushing 6,000 dead troops at this point. ISIS and all these other groups would be attacking us on a minute-to-minute basis, and that&#8217;s all you would be hearing about, is the failure of us not to get out of Iraq.
Now we have to facilitate the Iraqis, and where we can in Syria, and work with our Arab partners to try to degrade this organization to the point where they will lose their mobility. And it&#8217;s interesting, Patrick Cockburn had just mentioned about supporting—you know, everyone in Syria now is rallying around the Assad government, and that&#8217;s very true, a government we wanted to see gone two years ago. But the alternative, other than the Free Syrian Army groups and al-Qaeda&#8217;s Jabhat al-Nusra, is ISIS . And they are absolutists. They are going to eliminate anyone in their path. So now we have a completely different dynamic than we had 12 years ago.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, this is a discussion we will certainly continue on Democracy Now! I want to thank Patrick Cockburn in London, Middle East correspondent for The Independent , just back from Syria and Iraq, and Malcolm Nance, here with us in New York, retired U.S. counterterrorism intelligence officer and U.S. combat veteran.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Louisiana. What will happen with Albert Woodfox, the man, the prisoner, who has been held longer than any prisoner in solitary confinement in this country, for 42 years? Stay with us. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Obama administration is considering a plan to increase the U.S. presence in Iraq by sending 400 to 500 more military personnel as well as establishing a new military base in Anbar province. The United States already has about 3,000 troops, including trainers and advisers, in Iraq. The administration is describing the new military personnel as advisers who will help train Iraqi forces in an attempt to retake the city of Ramadi, which fell to the self-described Islamic State last month. Plans to retake Mosul may be pushed off until next year.

The move comes just days after President Obama acknowledged the U.S. does not yet have a, quote, "complete strategy" to deal with ISIL, which has seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria. It was a year ago this week when Islamic State fighters seized Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. Today the city remains in ISIL’s hands. Advisers close to the White House say it could take decades to defeat ISIL. At the recent U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar, retired Marine General John Allen said, quote, "This will be a long campaign. Defeating Daesh’s ideology will likely take a generation or more," he said, using the Arabic name for ISIL.

AMYGOODMAN: Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders is reporting Iraq is now facing its biggest humanitarian emergency in a generation. Almost three million people have fled war-torn areas of Iraq controlled by the Islamic State. The United Nations estimates 8.2 million Iraqis, nearly 25 percent of the population, will need some kind of humanitarian help this year.

To talk more about the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, we’re joined by two guests. With us here in New York, Malcolm Nance, a retired Arabic-speaking U.S. counterterrorism intelligence officer and combat veteran who first worked in Iraq in 1987. He’s the author of several books, including The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014. His new piece for The Intercept is called "ISIS Forces That Now Control Ramadi are Ex-Baathist Saddam Loyalists."

And joining us from London is Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, just back from reporting in Iraq and Syria. His latest book, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution. His most recent article on Iraq is headlined "War with Isis: As the militant threat grows, so does the West’s self-deception."

Let’s go first right here to Malcolm Nance. Welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about this latest piece you have written. Talk about the political context for the rise and the power of ISIS today.

MALCOLMNANCE: Well, the biggest misperception now—we’re here on the first anniversary of ISIS taking the city of Mosul, and the biggest misperception that the media has certainly fostered is that ISIS is this new group, which has appeared out of nowhere, they have blitzed across the Middle East, and they have managed to take large swaths of Iraq and Syria—and when, in fact, ISIS is the same group and a conglomeration of groups that we’ve been fighting since the day we invaded Iraq in 2003.

The piece that I wrote in The Intercept, which was extracted from parts of my book, based on my book, The Terrorists of Iraq, is that the former regime loyalists, almost 100,000 of them, who were all taken away from their jobs by Ambassador Bremer’s General Order Number Two, went underground and have been fighting us for the last 13 years, nonstop. However, al-Qaeda in Iraq, which started in 2003, as well, has taken over the upper-level management of these groups. And so, what we have is we have, technically, a mega group of all the former regime loyalist insurgent groups, all of the Iraqi Islamic insurgent groups and the foreign fighters who have used Syria as a base camp. And they now are called ISIS.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Malcom Nance, how do you reconcile the fact that the Baathists were largely a secular semi-socialist party when they started, reconciling their ideology and their approach to the world with that of jihadists?

MALCOLMNANCE: Yeah, it’s very interesting, because the jihadists wouldn’t even have been in Iraq until after the U.S. invasion, when the communities that were former Baathists—and you’re right, the Baathists were secularists. The Baath Party was this conglomeration of socialism and secular government that formed into a dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, and also under Hafez al-Assad in Syria. Now—but people who were in Iraq who were Baathists were still Muslims. And as a matter of fact, Saddam Hussein, in the later years, after the U.S. sanctions went into place and after the Iran-Iraq War, started to become more Islamic in name—that is, to co-opt Islam from the people on the street.

The jihadists who came in just after the invasion, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, came in with their own ideology, which is radical, extremist, almost cultish, Islam. But the Baathists understood that these people had the motivation and the combat capacity to do things that the Baathist forces didn’t have to do, as a matter of fact. You had al-Qaeda in Iraq, who would carry out all the suicide bombings that they wanted. The Baathists would facilitate their entry in from Syria, would build car bombs for them, would gather all of the intelligence against U.S. forces, direct them to it, and they would drive their car bomb into a target—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them over the 12 years that Iraq has been in this turmoil.

But it’s a marriage of convenience, to a certain extent. Mosul was a Baathist city. Tikrit was a Baathist city. These are the people who ruled Iraq with an iron fist from 1968 to 2003, and they’re the people who were actually living there. ISIS is just the spearhead of the forces that have now joined them who are Baathists, as well, but ex-Baathist. And they have now taken this patina of the Islamic caliphate on top of that and have sworn their loyalties, but they are the seven-million-person population that owns the place.

AMYGOODMAN: Patrick Cockburn, you’re the Middle East correspondent for The Independent. You’re just back from Iraq and Syria. Do you share this assessment of Malcolm Nance?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: No. I think that there’s a big is disconnect between what’s happening now and what happened when Iraq was ruled by the Baath Party. Remember also, the Baath Party and the Iraqi security forces were supremely unsuccessful militarily in 2003, '91 and before, while Islamic State is very successful. Both come out of the Sunni community, et al., but I don't think that the Islamic State is the Baath Party in a new guise.

I mean, one thing that does strike me, though, as very important at the moment, and I’ve just been in northern Iraq and northern Syria talking to people who have come from Islamic State, is that it’s recruiting people all the time. It’s introduced conscription. So, it’s calling up tens of thousands of young men. So it’s an expanding organization. And I don’t think that the outside world, in America or anywhere else, have quite taken on board how tough this organization is and how quickly it’s growing.

And every so often, we hear accounts that, you know, it’s got weaker and so forth, but then it takes another city. It took Mosul. It’s taken Ramadi. It’s taken Palmyra. And now it’s getting close to Aleppo, once the biggest city in Syria. And it’s threatening western Syria. So, this is—people talk about, you know, it’s going to take so many decades to get rid of this organization, but the problem is much more immediate. This is an expanding organization. It’s a military machine that combines religious fanaticism with military expertise. And it’s growing all the time.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Patrick Cockburn, how do you account for this such a fast growth of the organization, especially given the years when there didn’t seem to be any expansion of the jihadists, especially in Iraq?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: Well, it looks to the Sunni community in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni Arabs about 20 percent of Iraqis, about 60 percent of Syrians. When the Syrian uprising took place in 2011, there was a whole big new constituency for them. And militarily, they’re much better organized and more effective than the other groups in Syria.

And although they’ve expanded, they still seem to be able to create a real state. I mean, that’s one of the things that struck me talking to people from there. They’ve introduced taxation. They’ve introduced conscription. They’ve introduced horrible laws restricting women from leaving home without a male relative, and you get beaten if you don’t do that. You have to wear the niqab covering the whole face, if you’re a woman. And anybody who opposes them ends up dead very fast. We were talking to the leader of one tribe in Iraq, the Albu Nimr, and 864 of them have been killed since last October. So, this is a savage organization, but it’s a pretty effective one. And it administers everything. It controls education, you know, even fishing rights in the Euphrates River. They have a whole series of instructions, what you can and cannot do. You can’t use explosives. You can’t use poison. So it really does control the area into which it’s expanded, which is greater than the size of Great Britain, and maybe it has at least six million people in it.

AMYGOODMAN: So your main point of disagreement with Malcolm Nance is simply that, while it may have started with different groups, it is far larger than the Baathists of the past?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: It’s far larger than al-Qaeda was during the—10 years ago or since. It’s gotten much bigger. You know, the Baathists—if you were a Baathist back then, this is—most of these people are pretty young. You know, if you have to go back to Baathist Iraq, you know, these guys—if all the militants came from there, it would be quite an aging organization. But I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s a connection in the leadership. Some of these people come out of the Iraqi security forces. But I think that it’s developed into a very different type of organization, and, unfortunately, a far more effective one.

AMYGOODMAN: Let’s get Malcolm Nance’s response.

MALCOLMNANCE: Well, in some respects, he’s right. It is a very different organization. It has developed in a different way, and it does have a large quantity of young men. But let’s not forget history here. If you were a member of the Saddam Fedayeen at age 20 when the United States invaded, you’d be 35 years old right now, and you would be a mid-level commander with 13 years of extraordinary combat experience under your belt. There were 100,000 Iraqis that we fought when we invaded Iraq. We only killed 6,000 of them in the invasion. That’s a lot, and it’s horrific we even did it, but the very fact is, that left almost 90,000 people who were there to fight us during the eight years that we were in combat with them.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq got all of the news during the time that we were fighting. The United States believed that al-Qaeda in Iraq was everyone that we weren’t fighting. But in fact, we were fighting 30,000 Saddam Fedayeen, 26,000 intelligence agency officers and managers, 6,000 senior Baathist commanders who had Iran-Iraq War experience. These people are the Sunni community of Iraq. They are the men and their children who are the people who own northern and western Iraq. ISIS is just al-Qaeda in Iraq evolved. Once in 2011 Syria fell, that gave them a complete playground, gave them all the lines of communications, weapons, that they could take and use it as a sanctuary to start carving out these areas. But you can’t carve out Anbar province. You can’t carve out Nineveh and Dhi Qar without actually co-opting the communities that are in there who turned against them in 2007 during the Iraq Awakening campaign. It’s just in 2011 they turned back to the people who were going to give them the autonomy they weren’t getting with the al-Maliki government.

So, yes, it’s a young organization. I know this organization. I’ve fought this organization. This organization has tried to kill me. I take it very personally. I see how they operate, and I understand that their tactics, their blitz tactics, are very effective against the Iraqi army, that really doesn’t want to be where they are. But as they take these communities, like Mosul, that community of Mosul, of course—that community in Mosul are the Sunnis who have always been there and who have ruled Iraq, and they are allowing them to come in.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to come back to this conversation after break. Our guests are Malcolm Nance, a retired U.S. counterterrorism intelligence officer and combat veteran. He’s here with us in New York, has a piece in The Intercept. And Patrick Cockburn is with us, just back from Iraq and Syria, Middle East correspondent for The Independent. He’s joining us from London. Stay with us.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: Our guests, Patrick Cockburn in London, just back from Iraq and Syria, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, and Malcolm Nance, here with us in New York, retired U.S. counterterrorism intelligence officer and combat veteran, spent many years in Iraq. Juan?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Malcolm Nance, you alluded to your experience in Iraq, and I wanted to go back to some of that experience, because you were in Iraq as far back as 1987, before the Persian Gulf War even. Could you talk about your experiences, your earliest experiences there? And also, your assessment of the Shia community and the Shia militias and their role in the continuing battle with ISIL?

MALCOLMNANCE: The missions that I worked in the 1980s, of course, were in support of the Iran-Iraq War. And as you know, we had a deconfliction problem after Iranian aircraft accidentally struck a U.S. Navy warship. So their were deconfliction missions to Iraq and around Iraq and Kuwait.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Deconfliction? What does that mean?

MALCOLMNANCE: Ah, yeah, that’s—sorry, it’s a technical term which means that we assist them in not mischaracterizing or misidentifying our warships as Iranian navy ships. They were carrying out airstrikes in the Persian Gulf and destroying Iranian tankers. And so, there was a very early mission to deconflict their aircraft attacks away from U.S. warships.

AMYGOODMAN: And the U.S. was supporting both sides.

MALCOLMNANCE: The United States at that time was technically neutral, but it was in the interest of the United States to facilitate the Saudi and Kuwaiti activities in support of Iraq.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the Shia, and your experience with the Shia militias, as well?

MALCOLMNANCE: Well, I got involved with the Shia very early on. Right after the Operation Desert Storm, I operated in southern Iraq around the areas south of Basra, Umm Qasr, al-Nasiriyah, all these areas down there. And this is where the Shia uprising took place, because the Iraqis, of course, they know their people. And they managed to coordinate and trick General Schwarzkopf into allowing them to use helicopters, and as the Shia of Basra rose up, they used the terms of our peace treaty to carry out attacks on them. And I spent quite a bit of time in Basra, as a matter of fact.

Right now what you’re seeing with the Iraqi Shia militias, the Hashid Shaabi, these popular mobilization units, they call themselves, is very interesting, because, you know, throughout my entire time in Iraq, we fought the Shia. The U.S. Army fought the Shia militias of the Jaish al-Mahdi, which was Muqtada al-Sadr’s organization. And I would have people say to me, "If Sheikh Sistani tells me or Sheikh al-Sadr tells me to attack the Americans, I have to. I’m just obligated to do that." Well, right now, because of the failure of the Iraqi army, that is how the southern—the Shia of Iraq, who I believe are about 80 percent of the population of Iraq, are mobilizing now in a capacity that they wouldn’t do if they were an Iraqi army unit. They are essentially armed mobs who are going up there and throwing manpower at the ISIS crisis, and with some Iranian support, and just coming in and giving large quantities of manpower to take back cities like Tikrit, Baiji oil refinery. And they believe that they’re going to Ramadi. But when they go there, they’re in it for punishment. They’re not in this in order to maintain the stability of the Shia and Sunni dialogue within Iraq. They are going there to punish the community for bringing ISIS.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to go to comments of your former boss—that’s right, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld—who told The Times of London, quote, "The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words." He went on to say, quote, "I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories." Several commentators, including the journalist Bob Woodward, have challenged Rumsfeld’s recent comments. Seven weeks after the U.S. invasion, Rumsfeld said, quote, "If Iraq—with its size, capabilities, resources and its history—is able to move to the path of representative democracy, however bumpy the road, then the impact in the region and the world could be dramatic. Iraq could conceivably become a model." I wanted to get Patrick Cockburn’s response to this, Rumsfeld basically blaming Bush, saying Bush was wrong.

PATRICKCOCKBURN: I think, from the beginning, you have to separate two things: the invasion and the occupation. A lot of Iraqis wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, including the Sunni as well as the Shia and the Kurds. But occupation was always—whichever way they tried to play it, was never going to work. The Sunni weren’t going to accept it, because they had been the dominant community. The Shia wanted to be the dominant community. They’re about 60 percent of Iraqis, Shia Arabs. And they didn’t want the U.S. to be the dominant power. And these, of course, were connected, got support from Iran and Syria, because at that time various people in Washington were saying, "Baghdad today, Tehran and Damascus tomorrow." So the occupation was always going to capsize, whatever way they played it. Since then, there are people saying, "Ah, if we had done something a bit different, it could have worked." But, you know, all this talk about nation building—one nation doesn’t build another. Occupying powers normally act in their own interests, which is exactly what happened this time around.

AMYGOODMAN: What’s the West’s self-deception here? And what do you think needs to happen, Patrick Cockburn?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: Well, talking kind of at the present moment, I think that in Syria and Iraq, the self-deception about the strength of the Islamic State and thinking that it’s somehow going to implode, or if you leave it alone, it’s not going to expand, I think don’t that’s true. And that’s proven by events.

I think also there’s an attempt to rebrand various organizations, like the al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been advancing in northern Syria, and other al-Qaeda-type organizations in the south. And the idea is that somehow this will weaken Assad. What really happens in Syria is that Syrians in Damascus may not much like Assad, but if they’re connected to the government, not just Christians and Alawites and Shia, but ordinary Sunni, they’re terrified of the Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra or any of these other extremists taking over. Therefore, they support Assad because they’ve got no alternative. As soon as there—if there was an alternative, then the things might change. But accepting al—now that the whole Syrian opposition is basically dominated by jihadis and al-Qaeda-type organizations, then this means that Assad will continue to get support.

What they ought to do is bomb Islamic State and the others in all circumstances. They should give priority to fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and they’re not quite doing that. This idea of arming the Sunni tribe has been around for a long time. Maybe you could do that when al-Qaeda in Iraq was powerful in 2006 and '07, but it was never as powerful as the Islamic State was. It was never a state organization. So, I don't—you know, you can meet these tribal leaders in Erbil and in Amman. They’re always promising great things. But what I notice is that there isn’t much resistance locally in Mosul and Ramadi and these other cities. You don’t see assassinations and bombings on a wide scale. So I think that that’s just really a diversionary policy. What I think Washington and its allies should do is give priority, complete priority, to fighting the Islamic State, and they haven’t really done that yet.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Patrick Cockburn, you’ve chronicled the little-noted successes of Kurdish forces in battling against ISIL. Could you talk about that and also whether you think that the map of that region of the world has essentially been redrawn permanently as a result of the continuing conflicts between ethnic, political and religious forces over the last 12 years there?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: Yeah, I mean, up in—I was in northern Syria, where there are three big Kurdish enclaves. There are about 2.2 million Syrian Kurds, about 10 percent of the population. They’ve organized themselves pretty well. They are fighting Islamic State. While I was there, they had won a victory at a place called Mount Abdulaziz. They were pretty efficient compared to the Iraqi army or militias, or, indeed, the Syrian army. But so they’re redrawing it for the moment. But they’ve benefited, really, from both the Syrian government and Islamic State fighting each other. Neither of them particularly want the Kurds to have a high degree of autonomy there. So in the long term, if either side in Syria wins, whether Islamic State or the Damascus government, that’s bad news for the Kurds.

But actually, this little state they’ve created there is perhaps the only successful outcome so far of the 2011 uprising in Syria, in that it’s gotten rid of the dictatorial regime of Assad, but it hasn’t been taken over by extreme Islamists. You know, their units of their army are made up of women, that women get 40 percent of the jobs in government, that it’s a holy—it’s a secular society. So, you know, its long-term future is debatable. It’s going to come under a lot of pressure. But the Kurds have a lot of achievements to be proud of there.

AMYGOODMAN: Patrick, last month, The Daily Beast featured an article criticizing your Syria reporting. The author, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad alleges you discount any Syrian nationalist opposition to the Assad regime and that your position is, quote, "Bashar al-Assad is at war with jihadi terrorism; the West has erred in supporting his opponents; and to support the opposition is to support ISIS." Ahmad goes on to say, quote, "For Cockburn, the situation in Syria is stark: you are with the regime or you are with the terrorists. He is an enthusiast for the war on terror—Bashar al-Assad’s war on terror. He criticizes the U.S. for excluding from its anti-ISIS coalition 'almost all those actually fighting ISIS, including Iran, the Syrian army, the Syrian Kurds and the Shia militias in Iraq.'" Ahmad later accuses you of, quote, "turning a blind eye to the regime’s ongoing slaughter of civilians." He says, "He is helped in this by the obtrusive barbarism of ISIS, which uses spectacle in the place of scale to force media attention. ISIS has been a godsend for the regime; it has helped divert attention from its crimes—and regime-friendly journalists have obliged in the deflection." Patrick Cockburn, your response?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: Oh, I get a lot of this. You know, anybody who’s going to report the Syrian civil war or the Iraqi civil war is going to be accused by one side or the other of being partisan. And what happens in the Middle East, you know, as always happened, but is happening worse now, is when you analyze something and you say this is the situation, that I don’t think Assad is going to go down, both sides are incredibly brutal in this civil war, then people think you’re justifying it. They mistake analysis for justification. And I’ve had that, really, since 2011.

I remember, you know, a rather nice Syrian I knew in Lebanon. I’d just been in Syria, and I had reported that Assad, for various reasons, was not going to collapse as a lot of media was saying. And as I came back into Syria, I switched on my telephone, and there was the same guy shouting at me, shouting, "Shame on The Independent! Shame on you!" And it was just that I had reported the situation as I saw it—objectively. But he sort of wished that reality was different, and that’s why he was shouting at me. And this is the same sort of stuff.

You know, I can understand the passions involved, that both sides commit appalling atrocities, using maximum violence, whatever they have, against civilians. This is true of the Assad government dropping barrel bombs on civilians. It’s true on the Islamic State. Five, six hundred members of another tribe in Syria were massacred. So I can understand how people feel like that. And it’s part of the war, so, yeah, I get attacked like that. I’m sure I’ll be attacked again. And there’s nothing much I can really do about that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Malcolm Nance, in closing, I’d like to ask you, here we are, 12 years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and you’ve been—you participated in, were involved in much of the regime change that occurred there. What’s your assessment of the failures of the United States in Iraq and its responsibility for the current situation?

MALCOLMNANCE: To take nothing away from the people who fought that war, that war should never have been fought. I’m saying this not as someone who writes books; I’m saying this as an intelligence professional. Invading Iraq after 2003 would have been akin to invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor. It had nothing to do with 9/11. The intelligence did not support it.

I had an incident—not an incident, but an event, which occurred about six months before the invasion, and I met a very high-level intelligence person who was a personal friend of Colin Powell, and he said, "Malcolm, what’s your assessment of this? They’re talking about the communications intercept that we got from the Iraqis, that the president had put out to justify part of the war." And I said, "I’ve been doing this for decades. I just don’t see it. The intelligence is not there. We don’t have direct links to 9/11." Afghanistan, where I had just come back from, is full of al-Qaeda. They had gone over the mountain to Pakistan. This is a strategic mistake. It’s done.

And what we need to do now is we have fostered the Iraqi government, we have tried to help them facilitate their growth, we have tried to help democracy, despite what Donald Rumsfeld says. However, we’re at the point now where the Pandora’s box is open and we have unleashed a group, which has taken al-Qaeda ideology to its exact extreme. They have carved out exactly what Osama bin Laden had been saying for almost three decades, that he wanted. He wanted an Islamic caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. They have achieved that nominally. They control the roads. They control a few cities. But right now we’re doing a linear battle using forces we know that can’t fight, or won’t fight. Some Iraqi units are brilliant, like the Golden Division, the Iraqi Special Operations Forces. But what we have is we have a situation where we are going to have to take them on.

Now, does it require U.S. troops? I don’t believe it does. Will it require additional training? Yes. We’re going to have to create forces which are going to have to go after ISIS where ISIS lives. Right now we’re trying to take back Ramadi and Mosul, but ISIS doesn’t live on every road in between there. You have to cut them off, you have to isolate them. The strategic policy of the Pentagon right now is do it from the air. It can’t be done from the air. We’re going to have to get a lot more air power and people who are going to go in there and confront them and cut them off.

AMYGOODMAN: So why are you talking about anything different than happened 12 years ago, if you’re talking about re-engage? Already thousands of troops are there. Now President Obama, probably today, is announcing another 500 troops.

MALCOLMNANCE: The president is in damage-control mode. What we have is flooding here, the uncontrollable flooding in a situation that didn’t need to be underwater. And so, what he’s trying to do is incrementally do this so that he doesn’t have to introduce large forces that will get attacked. If we had stayed in Iraq after 2011, we would be well past the 4,693 dead that we had in that war. We’d be pushing 6,000 dead troops at this point. ISIS and all these other groups would be attacking us on a minute-to-minute basis, and that’s all you would be hearing about, is the failure of us not to get out of Iraq.

Now we have to facilitate the Iraqis, and where we can in Syria, and work with our Arab partners to try to degrade this organization to the point where they will lose their mobility. And it’s interesting, Patrick Cockburn had just mentioned about supporting—you know, everyone in Syria now is rallying around the Assad government, and that’s very true, a government we wanted to see gone two years ago. But the alternative, other than the Free Syrian Army groups and al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra, is ISIS. And they are absolutists. They are going to eliminate anyone in their path. So now we have a completely different dynamic than we had 12 years ago.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, this is a discussion we will certainly continue on Democracy Now! I want to thank Patrick Cockburn in London, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, just back from Syria and Iraq, and Malcolm Nance, here with us in New York, retired U.S. counterterrorism intelligence officer and U.S. combat veteran.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Louisiana. What will happen with Albert Woodfox, the man, the prisoner, who has been held longer than any prisoner in solitary confinement in this country, for 42 years? Stay with us.

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Wed, 10 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400Matt Taibbi on the Journalist & Politician Cheerleaders for Iraq War, Then & Nowhttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/5/21/matt_taibbi_on_the_journalists_politicians
tag:democracynow.org,2015-05-21:blog/44d93d In this web-only conversation with journalist Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, we turn to Iraq. He recently wrote a piece for Rolling Stone titled &quot;Forget What We Know Now: We Knew Then Iraq War Was a Joke.&quot; Taibbi wrote the piece after Jeb Bush&#8217;s infamous interview on Fox News. Megyn Kelly asked Bush &quot;knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?&quot; Bush responded, &quot;I would have.&quot; Jeb Bush later reversed his stance.
In this web-only conversation with journalist Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, we turn to Iraq. He recently wrote a piece for Rolling Stone titled "Forget What We Know Now: We Knew Then Iraq War Was a Joke." Taibbi wrote the piece after Jeb Bush’s infamous interview on Fox News. Megyn Kelly asked Bush "knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?" Bush responded, "I would have." Jeb Bush later reversed his stance.]]>
Thu, 21 May 2015 21:12:00 -0400Matt Taibbi on the Journalist & Politician Cheerleaders for Iraq War, Then & Now In this web-only conversation with journalist Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, we turn to Iraq. He recently wrote a piece for Rolling Stone titled &quot;Forget What We Know Now: We Knew Then Iraq War Was a Joke.&quot; Taibbi wrote the piece after Jeb Bush&#8217;s infamous interview on Fox News. Megyn Kelly asked Bush &quot;knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?&quot; Bush responded, &quot;I would have.&quot; Jeb Bush later reversed his stance. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsMatt Taibbi on the Journalist & Politician Cheerleaders for Iraq War, Then & Now In this web-only conversation with journalist Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, we turn to Iraq. He recently wrote a piece for Rolling Stone titled &quot;Forget What We Know Now: We Knew Then Iraq War Was a Joke.&quot; Taibbi wrote the piece after Jeb Bush&#8217;s infamous interview on Fox News. Megyn Kelly asked Bush &quot;knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?&quot; Bush responded, &quot;I would have.&quot; Jeb Bush later reversed his stance. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsExpanding Foothold, Islamic State Captures Syria's Ancient Palmyra After Fall of Iraq's Ramadihttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/5/21/expanding_foothold_islamic_state_captures_syrias
tag:democracynow.org,2015-05-21:en/story/790334 NERMEEN SHAIKH : Fighters from the self-described Islamic State now control more than half of Syria, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The announcement was made after the Islamic State seized control of both the ancient and modern cities of Palmyra in central Syria. Palmyra is home to some of the world&#8217;s most renowned historic sites, including the Temple of Ba&#8217;al, an ancient theater and a 2,000-year-old colonnade. The fall of Palmyra comes just days after fighters from the Islamic State seized control of the Iraqi city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. The Islamic State attacked the city by sending in a wave of 30 suicide car bombs. Ten of the vehicles were packed with enough bomb-making materials to carry out explosions the size of the blast of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
AMY GOODMAN : Iranian-backed Shiite militias are now staging a counteroffensive to retake Ramadi. The United States has begun carrying out aerial bombings to support the effort. Former State Department official Ramzy Mardini told the Military Times , quote, &quot;The U.S. has effectively changed its position, coming to the realization that Shiite militias are a necessary evil in the fight against ISIS .&quot; The United States has also expedited shipment of 1,000 additional AT4 anti-tank weapons for Iraqi forces.
Joining us now is Charles Glass, former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent. His latest book is titled Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring .
Charles, first address this latest news that the self-proclaimed Islamic State has moved from Ramadi and has now taken over the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria, and that ISIS now controls more than half of Syria.
CHARLES GLASS : Well, it hasn&#8217;t moved from Ramadi. The Islamic State is fighting a two-front war, one in the east against the Iraqi army and the peshmerga of the Kurdish Regional Government, and then in the west against the Syrian army. They have substantial forces on both sides so that they&#8217;re able to attack in both places and, as now we&#8217;ve seen with Palmyra and Ramadi falling, successfully to fight this two-front war. The fact that they can do this means that they&#8217;re—they have not given up, they have not retreated. There were hopes in Iraq that there would be an attempt to retake Mosul—obviously, that is going to wait—while Baghdad itself is protected, because Ramadi is so close to Baghdad. And in Syria, taking Palmyra or the town of Tadmur next to Palmyra, where there was a notorious prison where there were many Islamist prisoners, is a major coup for them. But when we say that half of Syria is now under ISIS control, what that means is that half the territories, but three-quarters of the population is still under government control.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, Charlie Glass, could you talk about the significance of Palmyra? I mean, not only is it the site of these ancient ruins, but it is also close to the oil and gas fields, which the Syrian government uses to generate electricity for a part of the country.
CHARLES GLASS : Well, ISIS had already last year taken oil and gas fields near Raqqa, which is its—the capital of the Islamic caliphate. So this is simply expanding their access to more crude oil, which they are selling extremely cheaply on the world market through Turkey.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And do you think—there&#8217;s been some concern expressed that ISIS will gain revenue, possibly, from the illegal trafficking of the antiquities that are there in Palmyra?
CHARLES GLASS : Well, ISIS and the other extreme Islamic group, the Nusra Front, have been selling antiquities from northern Syria for the past couple of years. It&#8217;s nothing new. Traders are coming down from Turkey to buy the most valuable artifacts and then sell them in Turkey and in Europe. This will simply increase the plunder. So what they don&#8217;t sell, they will destroy, saying that they&#8217;re destroying idols. And they particularly would like to destroy pre-Islamic Roman structures that are in Palmyra. Palmyra is in the middle of the desert; it&#8217;s not really easily accessible from anywhere. But it is a most beautiful ancient city, which, if they behave the way they behaved in ancient cities in Iraq, won&#8217;t be there anymore.
AMY GOODMAN : The Syrian antiquities chief said hundreds of statues had been moved from the historic, ancient city of Palmyra to locations safe from Islamic State militants, who managed to take control of areas today. He called on the international community to help protect the ancient site.
MAAMOUN ABDULKARIM : [translated] It is an international battle. If IS succeeds, it will not be a victory against only the Syrian people, but one against America, China, France, Britain and Russia and all the permanent members in the Security Council, as well as the international community. They must at least prevent the advance of any reinforcement to the groups that have already crept into the city.
AMY GOODMAN : The city is called Palmyra, or Palmyra, by some. But talk about what this means even beyond Palmyra in Syria. You wrote a book on this, Charles Glass, that&#8217;s just been published, Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring .
CHARLES GLASS : The military conflict between the Syrian government and its Islamist opponents, this is part of the seesaw that&#8217;s been going on since the war began. The regime makes gains in certain areas, and the Islamists retreat, then the Islamists make gains. And this is a measure of the inability of either side to defeat the other. So, the fall of Palmyra militarily doesn&#8217;t mean very much. From there, there aren&#8217;t many places to strike out. However, psychologically, it means a lot because it&#8217;s an important part of Syrian and human civilization. But militarily, the struggle will go on. This war could go on for years as each side takes and loses territory, conquers and loses control of populations, and drives—and particularly with the Islamists, drives populations out of their homes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And what do you say, Charlie Glass, to the fact that the antiquities chief also asked for more international help to help protect Palmyra? Do you feel that there should be a more robust international military intervention now to prevent the self-proclaimed Islamic State&#8217;s military successes?
CHARLES GLASS : I&#8217;m not sure what the antiquities chief in Syria meant when he said that there should be intervention, if he means military intervention or if he means UNESCO should act to rescue those—the things that can be moved and taken to a safe place, in safer parts of Syria or outside Syria, until the war is over. I&#8217;m not sure. It would be, I think, very demoralizing for Syrian people to see an international military intervention to protect ruins, but not to protect the 50,000 people who live around those ruins in the city of Tadmur. It would be saying—it would be a way of saying to the Syrian people, &quot;Your lives are not important, but these stones are.&quot; And that would probably reinforce the Islamic Front&#8217;s propaganda that the world doesn&#8217;t really care about you, but we do.
AMY GOODMAN : So, Charles Glass, talk about what is happening now in Syria. What is happening with Assad, who is still the ruler? What are the different alliances that are forming, and then the role of the West, like the United States?
CHARLES GLASS : Well, the alliances in Syria haven&#8217;t changed much. I mean, the Iranians and the Russians still back the Assad regime, and the United States, indirectly, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are supporting the opposition. The United States says it&#8217;s supporting a mythical moderate, non-Islamist opposition. But the weapons that it gives to those people end up in the hands of ISIS or the Nusra Front, anyway, as soon as they cross the border. The balance of forces, in that sense, have not changed for the last two years.
I think that one of the problems that the United States has is it has two different policies in this war. It is confronting actively IS in Iraq, because the United States supports the regime in Baghdad, but is allowing its client states—Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar—to support that same IS against a regime in Damascus that it doesn&#8217;t like because of its alliance with Iran and Russia.
AMY GOODMAN : What is the role of Saudi Arabia here?
CHARLES GLASS : Saudi Arabia&#8217;s role has been consistent from the beginning. It wanted to see Assad thrown out, and it would—it was giving funding and arms to anyone who would do that. And because of its own particular Wahhabist ideological bent, it gave the bulk of those supplies to people like that. And those were the people who formed the major—the two major Islamist groups in Syria, the Islamic State and the Nusra Front.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : But what do you think accounts for the fact that U.S. policy is different in Iraq than it is from Syria?
CHARLES GLASS : As I said, they want the regime in Damascus to fall because of its relationship with Iran, its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and its alliance with Russia. They want that regime to go. In Baghdad, they want the regime, since they set it up after the invasion of 2003—they want that regime to stay. But the problem is, these two regimes, in Baghdad and Damascus, are the forces opposed to the Islamic Front, and it&#8217;s the Islamic Front that wants to overthrow both of them. So, until there&#8217;s a coordination of forces—the Syrian army in the west, the Iraqi army and the Kurds in east—to have a coherent strategy to squeeze the Islamists in the middle, the war will go on and on.
AMY GOODMAN : The significance of the U.S. announcing that special forces had conducted a rare raid against a senior Islamic State figure at his residence in Omar, in Syria&#8217;s oil-rich southeast, commandos killing Abu Sayyaf, a Tunisian jihadi described as a manager of the Islamic State&#8217;s oil and gas operations, which has been a significant source of income for the organization?
CHARLES GLASS : Well, I&#8217;m not sure what your question is. I don&#8217;t—you just—
AMY GOODMAN : The significance of them killing him in this rare raid on his home?
CHARLES GLASS : Well, if it&#8217;s true, then it&#8217;s an attempt to cut off some of their supply of money, because they&#8217;re using that to fight the Iraqi army and have successes like the one they&#8217;ve just had in Ramadi, if—that&#8217;s if it&#8217;s true. I mean, a lot of these reports that come out, they&#8217;re impossible to verify, because there&#8217;s only one source for that—for that story.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Well, I also wanted to ask about Iraq. On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Jeff Rathke acknowledged the loss of Ramadi was a setback, but pledged continued U.S. support.
JEFF RATHKE : We&#8217;ve always known that the fight would be long and difficult, especially in Anbar province. And so there&#8217;s no denying that this is a setback, but there&#8217;s also no denying that the United States will help the Iraqis take back Ramadi. As of today, we are supporting the Iraqi security forces and the government of Iraq with precision airstrikes and advice to the Iraqi forces. Our aircraft are in the air searching for ISIL targets, and they will continue to do so until Ramadi is retaken
NERMEEN SHAIKH : The fall of Ramadi came despite weeks of U.S. airstrikes and is considered one of ISIL&#8217;s biggest victories since it seized territory across Iraq last June. Speaking Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said he expects the Islamic State&#8217;s gains to be reversed.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY : In addition, their communications have been reduced, their funding and financial mechanisms have been reduced, and their movements, by and large, in—most certainly where there are air patrols and other capacities, have been reduced. But that&#8217;s not everywhere. And so, it is possible to have the kind of attack we&#8217;ve seen in Ramadi. But I am absolutely confident, in the days ahead, that will be reversed.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Charlie Glass, that was John Kerry speaking on Tuesday. So could you talk about this question of whether the U.S. should now engage—I mean, even the Iraqi government has said that they need more military assistance to be able to fight the Islamic State. And because, as you pointed out, the U.S. is supporting the Iraqi government, whereas of course it&#8217;s not doing so with the Assad regime in Syria, do you think that the U.S. should now consider perhaps troops in Iraq?
CHARLES GLASS : It seems to me obvious that the first measure should be to deprive the Islamic State of its arms and money from—coming through Turkey. Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States. It can close that border. It has not closed that border. The United States has not forced it to close that border. Until that border is closed, it has free and easy access to supplies and to funding and to places for its fighters to receive medical treatment and to get rest when they need it. Without that, they&#8217;re going to find themselves surrounded by the Syrian army, the Iraqi army and the Kurds, with no lines for outside—no lines of communication for outside support. I would think that if the United States wants to stay out of another war in the Middle East, which I think most of the public does want, that the correct strategy would be to cut off the supplies and the funding through Turkey.
AMY GOODMAN : Charles Glass, you&#8217;re in France, and on June 2nd, ministers from members of the coalition fighting the Islamic State will meet in Paris to devise strategies to reverse recent losses. What do you think needs to happen, as we look from Iraq to Syria?
CHARLES GLASS : Well, first, as I said, to cut—to close the border. Second, there has to be coordination among the Syrians, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Americans, who are all actively involved in opposing the Islamic State. Without that kind of coordination, it&#8217;s not going to work, because the—as we see, that the Islamic State can effectively pick which side it&#8217;s going to fight at which time and then go after the other side when it suits it. At the moment, it&#8217;s setting the agenda. I think that this coordination is vital. I think also it&#8217;s vital to bring an end to the war in Syria through discussions between the United States and the Russians. So, the United States supporting the opposition, the Russians supporting the regime, if they can come to an agreement between themselves, that would be a huge step forward, that they want—if they do indeed want to bring peace to Syria rather than simply force their own agenda at the expense of the Syrian people.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, Charlie Glass, you mentioned the question of funding and cutting off funding and closing the border. In your book, you conclude your book, Syria Burning , by citing an Arab diplomat in Damascus who said about support for the Islamic State, &quot;It&#8217;s like the lion tamer. He feeds and trains the lion, but the lion might kill him at the right moment.&quot; So, given this concern, is it your view that countries like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc., have now relinquished funding, military and financial, to the Islamic State?
CHARLES GLASS : No, clearly, they haven&#8217;t stopped funding and supplying them. The Turks are still allowing fighters to go through their border and to take part in fighting in Syria and Iraq. No, that simply hasn&#8217;t happened. It probably should happen. I think one of the fears that all of the backers of these two big Islamic groups have is that if the fighting in Syria stops, that they&#8217;ll come home and make problems for them at home. In a way, the Saudis, by encouraging these people to fight in Syria against what they see as an idolatrous, Alawite, non-Muslim regime is a way of making sure they don&#8217;t come back and make problems in Saudi Arabia itself. And the Turks also would be very worried if some of these fighters decide to go after Turkey and try to set up an Islamic State in Turkey, or indeed any of the countries that have supported IS.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to finally turn to the comments made by former Florida governor, Republican presidential hopeful and first brother Jeb Bush. Speaking Wednesday, he suggested the Obama administration&#8217;s policies led to the creation of the Islamic State.
JEB BUSH : ISIS didn&#8217;t exist when my brother was president. Al-Qaeda in Iraq was wiped out when my brother was president. There were mistakes made in Iraq, for sure, but the surge created a fragile, but stable, Iraq that the president could have built on, and it would have not allowed a ISIS , or ISIL .
AMY GOODMAN : Charles Glass, your final comment to Jeb Bush?
CHARLES GLASS : Well, he is right that President Obama did allow the Islamic Front to be created during his term of office, but he&#8217;s also minimizing the role that al-Qaeda in Iraq played in being the nucleus of IS and of the Nusra Front, both. While they did go underground during the surge, they didn&#8217;t disappear. And by the way, they did not exist before the American invasion under Bush&#8217;s brother took place in 2003. They didn&#8217;t exist at all. They are a function of that invasion.
AMY GOODMAN : Charles Glass, we want to thank you for being with us, former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent. His latest book is titled Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring . This is Democracy Now! When we come back, crime spree on Wall Street, but who goes to jail? Stay with us. NERMEENSHAIKH: Fighters from the self-described Islamic State now control more than half of Syria, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The announcement was made after the Islamic State seized control of both the ancient and modern cities of Palmyra in central Syria. Palmyra is home to some of the world’s most renowned historic sites, including the Temple of Ba’al, an ancient theater and a 2,000-year-old colonnade. The fall of Palmyra comes just days after fighters from the Islamic State seized control of the Iraqi city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. The Islamic State attacked the city by sending in a wave of 30 suicide car bombs. Ten of the vehicles were packed with enough bomb-making materials to carry out explosions the size of the blast of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

AMYGOODMAN: Iranian-backed Shiite militias are now staging a counteroffensive to retake Ramadi. The United States has begun carrying out aerial bombings to support the effort. Former State Department official Ramzy Mardini told the Military Times, quote, "The U.S. has effectively changed its position, coming to the realization that Shiite militias are a necessary evil in the fight against ISIS." The United States has also expedited shipment of 1,000 additional AT4 anti-tank weapons for Iraqi forces.

Joining us now is Charles Glass, former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent. His latest book is titled Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring.

Charles, first address this latest news that the self-proclaimed Islamic State has moved from Ramadi and has now taken over the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria, and that ISIS now controls more than half of Syria.

CHARLESGLASS: Well, it hasn’t moved from Ramadi. The Islamic State is fighting a two-front war, one in the east against the Iraqi army and the peshmerga of the Kurdish Regional Government, and then in the west against the Syrian army. They have substantial forces on both sides so that they’re able to attack in both places and, as now we’ve seen with Palmyra and Ramadi falling, successfully to fight this two-front war. The fact that they can do this means that they’re—they have not given up, they have not retreated. There were hopes in Iraq that there would be an attempt to retake Mosul—obviously, that is going to wait—while Baghdad itself is protected, because Ramadi is so close to Baghdad. And in Syria, taking Palmyra or the town of Tadmur next to Palmyra, where there was a notorious prison where there were many Islamist prisoners, is a major coup for them. But when we say that half of Syria is now under ISIS control, what that means is that half the territories, but three-quarters of the population is still under government control.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, Charlie Glass, could you talk about the significance of Palmyra? I mean, not only is it the site of these ancient ruins, but it is also close to the oil and gas fields, which the Syrian government uses to generate electricity for a part of the country.

CHARLESGLASS: Well, ISIS had already last year taken oil and gas fields near Raqqa, which is its—the capital of the Islamic caliphate. So this is simply expanding their access to more crude oil, which they are selling extremely cheaply on the world market through Turkey.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And do you think—there’s been some concern expressed that ISIS will gain revenue, possibly, from the illegal trafficking of the antiquities that are there in Palmyra?

CHARLESGLASS: Well, ISIS and the other extreme Islamic group, the Nusra Front, have been selling antiquities from northern Syria for the past couple of years. It’s nothing new. Traders are coming down from Turkey to buy the most valuable artifacts and then sell them in Turkey and in Europe. This will simply increase the plunder. So what they don’t sell, they will destroy, saying that they’re destroying idols. And they particularly would like to destroy pre-Islamic Roman structures that are in Palmyra. Palmyra is in the middle of the desert; it’s not really easily accessible from anywhere. But it is a most beautiful ancient city, which, if they behave the way they behaved in ancient cities in Iraq, won’t be there anymore.

AMYGOODMAN: The Syrian antiquities chief said hundreds of statues had been moved from the historic, ancient city of Palmyra to locations safe from Islamic State militants, who managed to take control of areas today. He called on the international community to help protect the ancient site.

MAAMOUNABDULKARIM: [translated] It is an international battle. If IS succeeds, it will not be a victory against only the Syrian people, but one against America, China, France, Britain and Russia and all the permanent members in the Security Council, as well as the international community. They must at least prevent the advance of any reinforcement to the groups that have already crept into the city.

AMYGOODMAN: The city is called Palmyra, or Palmyra, by some. But talk about what this means even beyond Palmyra in Syria. You wrote a book on this, Charles Glass, that’s just been published, Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring.

CHARLESGLASS: The military conflict between the Syrian government and its Islamist opponents, this is part of the seesaw that’s been going on since the war began. The regime makes gains in certain areas, and the Islamists retreat, then the Islamists make gains. And this is a measure of the inability of either side to defeat the other. So, the fall of Palmyra militarily doesn’t mean very much. From there, there aren’t many places to strike out. However, psychologically, it means a lot because it’s an important part of Syrian and human civilization. But militarily, the struggle will go on. This war could go on for years as each side takes and loses territory, conquers and loses control of populations, and drives—and particularly with the Islamists, drives populations out of their homes.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And what do you say, Charlie Glass, to the fact that the antiquities chief also asked for more international help to help protect Palmyra? Do you feel that there should be a more robust international military intervention now to prevent the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s military successes?

CHARLESGLASS: I’m not sure what the antiquities chief in Syria meant when he said that there should be intervention, if he means military intervention or if he means UNESCO should act to rescue those—the things that can be moved and taken to a safe place, in safer parts of Syria or outside Syria, until the war is over. I’m not sure. It would be, I think, very demoralizing for Syrian people to see an international military intervention to protect ruins, but not to protect the 50,000 people who live around those ruins in the city of Tadmur. It would be saying—it would be a way of saying to the Syrian people, "Your lives are not important, but these stones are." And that would probably reinforce the Islamic Front’s propaganda that the world doesn’t really care about you, but we do.

AMYGOODMAN: So, Charles Glass, talk about what is happening now in Syria. What is happening with Assad, who is still the ruler? What are the different alliances that are forming, and then the role of the West, like the United States?

CHARLESGLASS: Well, the alliances in Syria haven’t changed much. I mean, the Iranians and the Russians still back the Assad regime, and the United States, indirectly, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are supporting the opposition. The United States says it’s supporting a mythical moderate, non-Islamist opposition. But the weapons that it gives to those people end up in the hands of ISIS or the Nusra Front, anyway, as soon as they cross the border. The balance of forces, in that sense, have not changed for the last two years.

I think that one of the problems that the United States has is it has two different policies in this war. It is confronting actively IS in Iraq, because the United States supports the regime in Baghdad, but is allowing its client states—Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar—to support that same IS against a regime in Damascus that it doesn’t like because of its alliance with Iran and Russia.

AMYGOODMAN: What is the role of Saudi Arabia here?

CHARLESGLASS: Saudi Arabia’s role has been consistent from the beginning. It wanted to see Assad thrown out, and it would—it was giving funding and arms to anyone who would do that. And because of its own particular Wahhabist ideological bent, it gave the bulk of those supplies to people like that. And those were the people who formed the major—the two major Islamist groups in Syria, the Islamic State and the Nusra Front.

NERMEENSHAIKH: But what do you think accounts for the fact that U.S. policy is different in Iraq than it is from Syria?

CHARLESGLASS: As I said, they want the regime in Damascus to fall because of its relationship with Iran, its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and its alliance with Russia. They want that regime to go. In Baghdad, they want the regime, since they set it up after the invasion of 2003—they want that regime to stay. But the problem is, these two regimes, in Baghdad and Damascus, are the forces opposed to the Islamic Front, and it’s the Islamic Front that wants to overthrow both of them. So, until there’s a coordination of forces—the Syrian army in the west, the Iraqi army and the Kurds in east—to have a coherent strategy to squeeze the Islamists in the middle, the war will go on and on.

AMYGOODMAN: The significance of the U.S. announcing that special forces had conducted a rare raid against a senior Islamic State figure at his residence in Omar, in Syria’s oil-rich southeast, commandos killing Abu Sayyaf, a Tunisian jihadi described as a manager of the Islamic State’s oil and gas operations, which has been a significant source of income for the organization?

AMYGOODMAN: The significance of them killing him in this rare raid on his home?

CHARLESGLASS: Well, if it’s true, then it’s an attempt to cut off some of their supply of money, because they’re using that to fight the Iraqi army and have successes like the one they’ve just had in Ramadi, if—that’s if it’s true. I mean, a lot of these reports that come out, they’re impossible to verify, because there’s only one source for that—for that story.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Well, I also wanted to ask about Iraq. On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Jeff Rathke acknowledged the loss of Ramadi was a setback, but pledged continued U.S. support.

JEFFRATHKE: We’ve always known that the fight would be long and difficult, especially in Anbar province. And so there’s no denying that this is a setback, but there’s also no denying that the United States will help the Iraqis take back Ramadi. As of today, we are supporting the Iraqi security forces and the government of Iraq with precision airstrikes and advice to the Iraqi forces. Our aircraft are in the air searching for ISIL targets, and they will continue to do so until Ramadi is retaken

NERMEENSHAIKH: The fall of Ramadi came despite weeks of U.S. airstrikes and is considered one of ISIL’s biggest victories since it seized territory across Iraq last June. Speaking Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said he expects the Islamic State’s gains to be reversed.

SECRETARY OF STATEJOHNKERRY: In addition, their communications have been reduced, their funding and financial mechanisms have been reduced, and their movements, by and large, in—most certainly where there are air patrols and other capacities, have been reduced. But that’s not everywhere. And so, it is possible to have the kind of attack we’ve seen in Ramadi. But I am absolutely confident, in the days ahead, that will be reversed.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Charlie Glass, that was John Kerry speaking on Tuesday. So could you talk about this question of whether the U.S. should now engage—I mean, even the Iraqi government has said that they need more military assistance to be able to fight the Islamic State. And because, as you pointed out, the U.S. is supporting the Iraqi government, whereas of course it’s not doing so with the Assad regime in Syria, do you think that the U.S. should now consider perhaps troops in Iraq?

CHARLESGLASS: It seems to me obvious that the first measure should be to deprive the Islamic State of its arms and money from—coming through Turkey. Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States. It can close that border. It has not closed that border. The United States has not forced it to close that border. Until that border is closed, it has free and easy access to supplies and to funding and to places for its fighters to receive medical treatment and to get rest when they need it. Without that, they’re going to find themselves surrounded by the Syrian army, the Iraqi army and the Kurds, with no lines for outside—no lines of communication for outside support. I would think that if the United States wants to stay out of another war in the Middle East, which I think most of the public does want, that the correct strategy would be to cut off the supplies and the funding through Turkey.

AMYGOODMAN: Charles Glass, you’re in France, and on June 2nd, ministers from members of the coalition fighting the Islamic State will meet in Paris to devise strategies to reverse recent losses. What do you think needs to happen, as we look from Iraq to Syria?

CHARLESGLASS: Well, first, as I said, to cut—to close the border. Second, there has to be coordination among the Syrians, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Americans, who are all actively involved in opposing the Islamic State. Without that kind of coordination, it’s not going to work, because the—as we see, that the Islamic State can effectively pick which side it’s going to fight at which time and then go after the other side when it suits it. At the moment, it’s setting the agenda. I think that this coordination is vital. I think also it’s vital to bring an end to the war in Syria through discussions between the United States and the Russians. So, the United States supporting the opposition, the Russians supporting the regime, if they can come to an agreement between themselves, that would be a huge step forward, that they want—if they do indeed want to bring peace to Syria rather than simply force their own agenda at the expense of the Syrian people.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, Charlie Glass, you mentioned the question of funding and cutting off funding and closing the border. In your book, you conclude your book, Syria Burning, by citing an Arab diplomat in Damascus who said about support for the Islamic State, "It’s like the lion tamer. He feeds and trains the lion, but the lion might kill him at the right moment." So, given this concern, is it your view that countries like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc., have now relinquished funding, military and financial, to the Islamic State?

CHARLESGLASS: No, clearly, they haven’t stopped funding and supplying them. The Turks are still allowing fighters to go through their border and to take part in fighting in Syria and Iraq. No, that simply hasn’t happened. It probably should happen. I think one of the fears that all of the backers of these two big Islamic groups have is that if the fighting in Syria stops, that they’ll come home and make problems for them at home. In a way, the Saudis, by encouraging these people to fight in Syria against what they see as an idolatrous, Alawite, non-Muslim regime is a way of making sure they don’t come back and make problems in Saudi Arabia itself. And the Turks also would be very worried if some of these fighters decide to go after Turkey and try to set up an Islamic State in Turkey, or indeed any of the countries that have supported IS.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to finally turn to the comments made by former Florida governor, Republican presidential hopeful and first brother Jeb Bush. Speaking Wednesday, he suggested the Obama administration’s policies led to the creation of the Islamic State.

JEBBUSH:ISIS didn’t exist when my brother was president. Al-Qaeda in Iraq was wiped out when my brother was president. There were mistakes made in Iraq, for sure, but the surge created a fragile, but stable, Iraq that the president could have built on, and it would have not allowed a ISIS, or ISIL.

AMYGOODMAN: Charles Glass, your final comment to Jeb Bush?

CHARLESGLASS: Well, he is right that President Obama did allow the Islamic Front to be created during his term of office, but he’s also minimizing the role that al-Qaeda in Iraq played in being the nucleus of IS and of the Nusra Front, both. While they did go underground during the surge, they didn’t disappear. And by the way, they did not exist before the American invasion under Bush’s brother took place in 2003. They didn’t exist at all. They are a function of that invasion.

AMYGOODMAN: Charles Glass, we want to thank you for being with us, former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent. His latest book is titled Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, crime spree on Wall Street, but who goes to jail? Stay with us.

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Thu, 21 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400Iraqi Activist Describes "Massacres Left and Right" as Civil Society Resists Takeover by ISIShttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/29/iraqi_activist_describes_massacres_left_and
tag:democracynow.org,2015-04-29:en/story/332220 AMY GOODMAN : I also spoke on Sunday with Yanar Mohammed, co-founder and director of the Organization of Women&#8217;s Freedom in Iraq. She came to the Netherlands from her home in Baghdad. I spoke to her on a bus after she had addressed Nobel Women&#8217;s Initiative on her way to the WILPF event. I began by asking her to describe the current situation in Iraq.
YANAR MOHAMMED : The country is under something that&#8217;s nothing less than a civil war, where the Iraqi government, led by the Islamist Shia parties, is attacking the ISIS -conquered cities, and the massacres are underway, both sides. And we, in the Organization of Women&#8217;s Freedom, are trying to get to the women who are escaping the enslavement of ISIS , and opening shelters for them. But in general, the country is under a prevailing culture of militias, which have the upper hand. And nobody can be complaining about it, because whenever we say anything, they say, &quot;But we are the ones who are liberating you from ISIS . It&#8217;s either us or ISIS .&quot;
So, the Shia Islamist government is bombarding us with the Shia culture, militia culture first, and then we are afraid that they bring us the laws that we had just stopped last year, the Jaafari law, where they bring legal status to the marriage of nine-year-old girls, daughters. This is a law that we had just stopped in 2014. And now, with the victory of the Shia militias, they might take the opportunity and bring it back on us in Iraq. So, the civil society is doing its best to work against the trafficking of the Yazidi women, to speak out against the oppression of ISIS to people, but we are being sandwiched between a culture of Shia Islamism from the government and Sunni barbaric Islamism from the ISIS . If you are a young person in Iraq, if you are a woman in Iraq, you are totally alienated, because there are massacres left and right, and there is enslavement in the 21st century. And everybody tells you that this is a democratic times that we are living in.
AMY GOODMAN : What do you see as the answer?
YANAR MOHAMMED : I see only a secular answer could be a real solution. It cannot be done in a short time. It will take its time, but it&#8217;s the only savior for all the people of Iraq—the religious, the Muslims, the Sunni, the Shia, the Christians, the Yazidis. Only a secular government and constitution can be the—can save everybody.
AMY GOODMAN : Your evaluation of what happened after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003? And what responsibility today do you think the United States has, and what the U.S. should do at this point?
YANAR MOHAMMED : When the U.S. invaded Iraq, we were under the oppression of one single dictator. And there wasn&#8217;t much discrimination between the people of Iraq. Whoever was in opposition would be discriminated against. We did have problems of how to deal with dictatorship, but nowadays we are at the necks of each other. We found out that we are Sunnis, we are Shia, and we are given so many reasons to be killing each other. We have 10 million youth who are carrying machine guns and going to the rest of the country, killing the rest of the youth in that part of the country. We are in a very big trap where killing each other doesn&#8217;t seem to be ending soon. Once you are in the trap of hatred upon ethnic and upon sectarian lines, it takes many years to wash away, to cleanse this hatred. I feel that at this point, even when we destroy—when the Iraqi government destroys ISIS , we have a very big problem on our hand. There are major massacres that have been committed both ways, and these will not end, because the relatives, the children of the people killed, will still continue these massacres.
Women have been—women&#8217;s rights have been totally lost. By laws, they have been lost. By their status in the society, they have been lost. Our voices of the women are being silenced continuously. Our radio, community radio for women, was shut down by the government on June 12. They gave us different stories, and we still don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s the final story for silencing us, but we know that this is no democracy. Women cannot breathe. Youth are killing each other based on the sectarian ID. This is something we were not expecting. This is not democracy.
AMY GOODMAN : Yanar Mohammed, co-founder and director of the Organization of Women&#8217;s Freedom in Iraq. And that does it for our show here at The Hague. AMYGOODMAN: I also spoke on Sunday with Yanar Mohammed, co-founder and director of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. She came to the Netherlands from her home in Baghdad. I spoke to her on a bus after she had addressed Nobel Women’s Initiative on her way to the WILPF event. I began by asking her to describe the current situation in Iraq.

YANARMOHAMMED: The country is under something that’s nothing less than a civil war, where the Iraqi government, led by the Islamist Shia parties, is attacking the ISIS-conquered cities, and the massacres are underway, both sides. And we, in the Organization of Women’s Freedom, are trying to get to the women who are escaping the enslavement of ISIS, and opening shelters for them. But in general, the country is under a prevailing culture of militias, which have the upper hand. And nobody can be complaining about it, because whenever we say anything, they say, "But we are the ones who are liberating you from ISIS. It’s either us or ISIS."

So, the Shia Islamist government is bombarding us with the Shia culture, militia culture first, and then we are afraid that they bring us the laws that we had just stopped last year, the Jaafari law, where they bring legal status to the marriage of nine-year-old girls, daughters. This is a law that we had just stopped in 2014. And now, with the victory of the Shia militias, they might take the opportunity and bring it back on us in Iraq. So, the civil society is doing its best to work against the trafficking of the Yazidi women, to speak out against the oppression of ISIS to people, but we are being sandwiched between a culture of Shia Islamism from the government and Sunni barbaric Islamism from the ISIS. If you are a young person in Iraq, if you are a woman in Iraq, you are totally alienated, because there are massacres left and right, and there is enslavement in the 21st century. And everybody tells you that this is a democratic times that we are living in.

AMYGOODMAN: What do you see as the answer?

YANARMOHAMMED: I see only a secular answer could be a real solution. It cannot be done in a short time. It will take its time, but it’s the only savior for all the people of Iraq—the religious, the Muslims, the Sunni, the Shia, the Christians, the Yazidis. Only a secular government and constitution can be the—can save everybody.

AMYGOODMAN: Your evaluation of what happened after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003? And what responsibility today do you think the United States has, and what the U.S. should do at this point?

YANARMOHAMMED: When the U.S. invaded Iraq, we were under the oppression of one single dictator. And there wasn’t much discrimination between the people of Iraq. Whoever was in opposition would be discriminated against. We did have problems of how to deal with dictatorship, but nowadays we are at the necks of each other. We found out that we are Sunnis, we are Shia, and we are given so many reasons to be killing each other. We have 10 million youth who are carrying machine guns and going to the rest of the country, killing the rest of the youth in that part of the country. We are in a very big trap where killing each other doesn’t seem to be ending soon. Once you are in the trap of hatred upon ethnic and upon sectarian lines, it takes many years to wash away, to cleanse this hatred. I feel that at this point, even when we destroy—when the Iraqi government destroys ISIS, we have a very big problem on our hand. There are major massacres that have been committed both ways, and these will not end, because the relatives, the children of the people killed, will still continue these massacres.

Women have been—women’s rights have been totally lost. By laws, they have been lost. By their status in the society, they have been lost. Our voices of the women are being silenced continuously. Our radio, community radio for women, was shut down by the government on June 12. They gave us different stories, and we still don’t know what’s the final story for silencing us, but we know that this is no democracy. Women cannot breathe. Youth are killing each other based on the sectarian ID. This is something we were not expecting. This is not democracy.

AMYGOODMAN: Yanar Mohammed, co-founder and director of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. And that does it for our show here at The Hague.

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Wed, 29 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400Debate: Hillary Clinton Sounds Populist Tone, But Are Progressives Ready to Back Her in 2016?http://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/13/debate_hillary_clinton_sounds_populist_tone
tag:democracynow.org,2015-04-13:en/story/46ded0 AMY GOODMAN : Former secretary of state, senator and first lady, Hillary Clinton, has formally entered the 2016 race for the White House in a bid to become the first woman U.S. president. If she wins the Democratic Party&#8217;s nomination, she&#8217;ll be the first woman presidential nominee in the party&#8217;s history. Clinton made her announcement in a two-minute video released online Sunday. In it, she focused on ordinary Americans starting new phases of life, including two men getting married, a woman preparing to retire, an interracial couple renovating their home, immigrants speaking Spanish, and a man starting a business.
GAY MAN : I&#8217;m getting married this summer to someone I really care about.
CHILD : I&#8217;m going to be in a play, and I&#8217;m going to be in a fish costume. We&#8217;re little tiny fishes.
RETIRING WOMAN : I&#8217;m getting ready to retire soon. Retirement means reinventing yourself, in many ways.
HOME RENOVATOR 1: Well, we&#8217;ve been doing a lot of home renovations.
HOME RENOVATOR 2: But most importantly, we really just want to teach our dog to quit eating the trash.
HOME RENOVATOR 1: And so, we have high hopes for 2015, that that&#8217;s going to happen.
WORKER : I&#8217;ve started a new career recently. This is a fifth generation company, which means a lot to me. This country was founded on hard work, and it really feels good to be a part of that.
HILLARY CLINTON : I&#8217;m getting ready to do something, too. I&#8217;m running for president. Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion, so you can do more than just get by: You can get ahead—and stay ahead. Because when families are strong, America is strong. So I&#8217;m hitting the road to earn your vote, because it&#8217;s your time. And I hope you&#8217;ll join me on this journey.
AMY GOODMAN : Hillary Clinton first ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 but lost to President Obama. Long considered the Democratic front-runner, she has been expected to declare her candidacy for months. Democratic candidates who may join her in her bid include former Maryland Governor Martin O&#8217;Malley, former Rhode Island Governor and Senator Lincoln Chafee, and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb. This comes as Senator Marco Rubio is expected to announce his bid today for the Republican presidential nomination. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky announced his plans to run last week, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz launched his candidacy in March.
Well, to discuss Clinton&#8217;s second bid for the White House, we host a roundtable discussion.
Here in New York, Joe Conason joins us, editor-in-chief of The National Memo , co-editor of The Investigative Fund and author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton .
We&#8217;re also joined by Michelle Goldberg, senior contributing writer at The Nation , author of several books, including The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World . Her latest article is headlined &quot;Hillary Clinton&#8217;s Feminist Family Values.&quot;
In Los Angeles, we&#8217;re joined by Robert Scheer, longtime journalist, editor of Truthdig , author of many books. His latest is They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy . Scheer is also the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street and also Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, [Reagan], and Clinton and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush .
And in Seattle, we&#8217;re joined by Kshama Sawant, a Socialist city councilmember. She helped win a $15-an-hour minimum wage for all workers in Seattle in one of her first moves when she became a member of the City Council. She&#8217;s a member of the Socialist Alternative, a nationwide organization of social and economic justice activists. She is up for re-election this year.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Joe Conason, let&#8217;s begin with you. Your assessment of Hillary Clinton, her bid yesterday, the much-awaited announcement, and why you support her?
JOE CONASON : Well, I don&#8217;t support her. I&#8217;m neutral in the primary, as I was the last time, when she ran against Barack Obama. I didn&#8217;t endorse her then. In fact, I was probably tougher on her than I was on Obama. So the idea that I&#8217;m endorsing her for anything is not right.
But, I mean, I was interested yesterday to see her announce, because she is clearly striving for a different tone. Last time, I and others wrote about the kind of baroque kind of almost coronation that they seemed to expect in her campaign: She was inevitable; she had more money than Obama or anyone else, and therefore she was going to just cruise to the nomination. And, of course, that turned out to be completely wrong. They made many mistakes in that campaign. It was a campaign that was divided against itself, in many cases. And she lost narrowly, but she lost. And I think, looking back on that, this time she has attempted to roll out her candidacy this time in a very different way—a modest tone, a tone of &quot;I want to be your champion,&quot; a slightly populist tone that I think is appropriate to this moment. And we&#8217;ll see what happens from here.
AMY GOODMAN : Kshama Sawant in Seattle, your response to the rollout of Hillary Clinton&#8217;s campaign? But what we&#8217;re going to talk about today, overall, though, is her record—this is a person with a proven record—and assessing what that has been, from first lady to senator to secretary of state, a previous presidential candidate, and now again. Kshama?
KSHAMA SAWANT : Well, as Joe was saying, you know, she is now trying to use a veneer of a populist image. But look, this is a person who has hired 200 advisers to tell her how she can look populist without angering her wealthy donors. And ultimately the question is absolutely about her record as a warmongering secretary of state who used her position to emphasize the drone attacks, to be a vocal proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and to use her position to promote the interests of multinational corporations at the expense of the interests of working people. And ultimately, you know, this candidate, if she is backed by the Democratic Party establishment apparatus, is going to be the Wall Street candidate. And fundamentally, we have to ask ourselves the question: Is the Democratic Party establishment ever, despite the populist imagery or rhetoric they may use, going to be—ever going to be a genuine vehicle in any way to promote the interests of working families?
And she&#8217;s been missing in action on the $15 demand. The $15 demand is taking over nationally, and she, like other people in the Democratic Party establishment, have been completely silent. She was on the board of Wal-Mart. Alice Walton has donated the maximum to her super PAC , to Ready for Hillary super PAC . And Wal-Mart is a corporation that has a a notorious union-busting record. And the $25,000 that Alice Walton donated to her is well more than the hourly employees at Wal-Mart make in a year, two-thirds of whom are women. And so I think we have to be very clear that she is going to represent the continuation of what we&#8217;ve seen in the last several decades, including Obama&#8217;s presidency, that this is going to be a Wall Street-controlled White House, and we need an alternative.
AMY GOODMAN : Michelle Goldberg, your response to the rollout yesterday and to your concerns about Hillary Clinton, whether you support her?
MICHELLE GOLDBERG : Well, I&#8217;m certainly going to support her versus whatever candidate the Republicans put up. You know, I&#8217;ve been pretty critical of Hillary Clinton over the years. I didn&#8217;t support her in 2008. In fact, I was furious with a lot of the older feminists who suggested that it was incumbent on women to vote for Hillary.
I was impressed with the rollout because, I mean, what&#8217;s interesting is that Hillary has been in public life for such a long time, and yet sometimes it can be hard to pin down exactly what she stands for, in part because she is a very changeable, chameleon-like candidate. You know, there was kind of Hillary the feminist lawyer, who worked on behalf of children&#8217;s rights. There&#8217;s the Hillary the senator, who sponsored a flag-burning amendment. You know, there&#8217;s now Hillary the grandmother, who&#8217;s talking about paid family leave and those sorts of things. My sense is, is that as many different kind of incarnations as she had, the one constant in her career, and maybe the place where she&#8217;s the most authentic, is in her concern for women and families, women and children—you know, the work that she did on maternal mortality when she was in the State Department, for example. And so, inasmuch as that&#8217;s going to be the center of this campaign and inasmuch as she is able to marry this kind of family-focused progressivism to women&#8217;s issues, like paid—or not women&#8217;s issues, family issues, but parental issues, like paid family leave, early childhood education, the sort of things that have never been at the center of a presidential election before, you know, not only do I think that that is a really good thing for feminism, but I also think that that is the best side of Hillary Clinton.
AMY GOODMAN : Robert Scheer, your response to Hillary Clinton entering the 2016 presidential race?
ROBERT SCHEER : Yeah, I think it&#8217;s absurd to suggest she&#8217;s a friend of children who are in need or families. This is a woman who, when her husband was governor, I first met her at that time, when I went down to interview him for the Los Angeles Times and he was starting his presidential run. And they were bragging about their welfare reform, which destroyed what existed of support for poor children in Arkansas. Then, as president, her husband, with her full-throated approval, destroyed the aid to families with dependent children, which 70 percent of the people on that program were children. It was the major federal program to help poor people and poor families, and in the cynicism of the Clinton administration, they destroyed that program. And we have no—we don&#8217;t even have an accounting of poor children anymore. They&#8217;re off the radar. So, that&#8217;s just utter nonsense.
And then, her husband—you know, after all, she, again, was a full-throated support. She was very close to Robert Rubin, to Lawrence Summers, to the people in the Clinton administration who gave us the radical deregulation of Wall Street, which, you know, caused incredible misery and the Great Recession—the Clinton signing on the collateralized debt obligation law which allowed all that junk to be legal, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, the Financial Services Modernization Act, the reverse Glass-Steagall. So they&#8217;re the ones that opened the door to the Wall Street thieves that brought on the Great Recession. And then, as senator, she&#8217;s carried water for Wall Street faithfully.
And then, finally, you know, if we&#8217;re going to run for—of somebody who has experience as secretary of state, I&#8217;d rather support John Kerry. After all, it&#8217;s been a great relief to see Kerry as opposed to Hillary Clinton. We finally have some rational foreign policy and peacemaking with Iran, with Cuba. Where was Hillary Clinton? And let me say, one reason I could never vote for Hillary Clinton is that she—her attack on Edward Snowden, her attack on the whistleblowers, to call them traitors, to talk about these people. And here is a woman who knew what the government was doing in spying on the American people. You know, she didn&#8217;t tell us. She didn&#8217;t trust the State Department with her email, but she never told us that the State Department, the CIA and the NSA were spying on the emails of all the Americans. No, but she thinks that&#8217;s fine. She&#8217;s just going to keep her email in her garage, you know, so I find her to be a center of cynicism and opportunism, and really quite reckless.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Our guests are Robert Scheer in Los Angeles, Kshama Sawant in Seattle, Michelle Goldberg here in New York, as well as Joe Conason. This is Democracy Now! Hillary Clinton has entered the 2016 presidential race. We&#8217;ll be back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : President Obama said over the weekend Hillary Clinton would be a, quote, &quot;excellent president.&quot; He was speaking in Panama City Saturday, before she announced her candidacy.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : With respect to Hillary Clinton, I&#8217;ll make my comments very brief. She was a formidable candidate in 2008. She was a great supporter of mine in the general election. She was an outstanding secretary of state. She is my friend. I think she would be an excellent president.
AMY GOODMAN : This is then-Senator Hillary Clinton back in 2002, ahead of the vote on the resolution to authorize the use of war—the use of war against Iraq.
SEN . HILLARY CLINTON : Because bipartisan support for this resolution makes success in the United Nations more likely, and therefore war less likely, and because a good-faith effort by the United States, even if it fails, will bring more allies and legitimacy to our cause, I have concluded, after careful and serious consideration, that a vote for the resolution best serves the security of our nation. If we were to defeat this resolution or pass it with only a few Democrats, I am concerned that those who want to pretend this problem will go away with delay will oppose any U.N. resolution calling for unrestricted inspections. This is a very difficult vote. This is probably the hardest decision I&#8217;ve ever had to make. Any vote that might lead to war should be hard. But I cast it with conviction.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Hillary Clinton in 2002. She was joining a number of other Democrats, as well as Republicans, voting for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq. Our roundtable today discussing Hillary Clinton entering the 2016 presidential race—if she were to win, she would be the first woman president of the United States—is Joe Conason, he&#8217;s author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton ; Michelle Goldberg, senior contributing writer at The Nation ; Robert Scheer, editor of Truthdig , his latest book, They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy ; and in Seattle, Kshama Sawant, Socialist city councilmember in Seattle.
Joe Conason, you wrote the five—you have been covering Hillary and Bill Clinton for a very long time. What about, first, what Obama said, the significance of what he said on Saturday, and Hillary Clinton, when she was a senator, voting for the war with Iraq, something that became a major issue—many say the reason she did not win the Democratic nomination in 2008?
JOE CONASON : Well, it definitely didn&#8217;t help. And she eventually admitted that that was a bad vote, she shouldn&#8217;t have cast that vote. I was very critical of the war and her at the time, I think you know. I probably appeared on here to talk about it. But that is now 13 years ago. John Kerry, who Bob recommended as a better presidential candidate, also voted for that resolution, and lots of people supported him for president the year after the Iraq War began, so—including me. So—
AMY GOODMAN : He also lost.
JOE CONASON : He also lost, not by much, but he won the Democratic nomination. Look, I think that&#8217;s something that she needs to be held to account for, and she has been, and she will be again. It&#8217;s not the full picture of her years as a senator or her view of foreign policy.
The second thing I would say is, what the president said is kind of more interesting and significant now, because he is the leader of the Democratic Party. And her service to him, both politically and in government, I think, has united the Democratic Party, much more than it was in 2008, behind her. If you look at poll numbers, she leads any conceivable opponent to her within the Democratic Party in the primary by 50 points, or something like that. And the reason is that the Obama faction of the party, if you want to put it that way—the party was almost evenly divided in 2008. The Obama supporters have rallied behind Hillary, in minority communities, feminists. You know, all of the people who might have been for Obama the last time are with Hillary now, or at least many, many of them. So, I think that was what mattered about what he said.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to turn to comments on Hillary Clinton made by Lincoln Chafee, a former U.S. senator, governor from Rhode Island, who announced Thursday he is exploring a run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Chafee served in the Senate as a Republican but left the party in 2007 to become an independent. He actively supported President Obama in 2008 and &#39;12. Chafee was elected governor in 2010 as an independent, and in 2013 he became a Democrat. Speaking to The Washington Post , he criticized Clinton&#39;s support of the 2002 vote on the invasion of Iraq. He said, quote, &quot;I don&#8217;t think anybody should be president of the United States that made that mistake. ... It&#8217;s a huge mistake and we live with broad, broad ramifications today of instability not only in the Middle East but far beyond and the loss of American credibility. There were no weapons of mass destruction,&quot; he said. Then he appeared on MSNBC later the same day and explained why the Iraq vote is still important.
LINCOLN CHAFEE : It&#8217;s relevant to what we read about every day in the papers in the Middle East and in other areas of the world—ISIS and what&#8217;s happening in Nigeria and how we confront some of these extremist insurgencies. And we were successful in the past, over the years, by having good alliances and having good American credibility, and that&#8217;s been squandered by this bad decision—even though it&#8217;s a long time ago, I agree with that, back in 2002, but the ramifications are still felt today.
AMY GOODMAN : So that&#8217;s former Governor and Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who may throw his hat in the ring as a Democrat. Michelle Goldberg, your response, saying—his saying that anyone who would vote for war in Iraq, given what has happened then and today, is not qualified to be president?
MICHELLE GOLDBERG : You know, I think that there&#8217;s obviously something to that. I would say that if you&#8217;re kind of questioning someone&#8217;s judgment, I would question the judgment of someone who didn&#8217;t realize that the Republican Party wasn&#8217;t a place for decent people until 2007, you know, and so—you know, I think that that&#8217;s probably the best case that he has against her, and certainly that vote is the reason I didn&#8217;t support her in 2008.
But I also think that if you look at kind of who the field is, you know, I&#8217;m someone who believes that the lesser of two evils is less evil. And she&#8217;s, to me, by far not—I mean, at a certain point, it doesn&#8217;t even really matter, right? She&#8217;s almost certainly going to be the nominee, and she&#8217;s going to be leagues better than whoever she&#8217;s running against on the Republican Party. And as I said, she&#8217;s a kind of chameleon-like candidate who is, for better or worse, a person who often bows to political pressure. And so, this is the—this is the worst thing about her, but it also opens a potential opportunity for progressives, who can try to, I think, if they get organized and try to work within the system as opposed to working as spoilers, exert pressure on her from the other direction.
AMY GOODMAN : Kshama Sawant, what about that argument, that the candidate people are going to get to vote for in 2016, this lesser-of-two-evils argument—now, of two evils? You&#8217;re with Socialist Alternative, which is a third party. Many did not expect you would win a council seat in the Seattle City Council, but you did. What about that issue of the lesser of two evils?
KSHAMA SAWANT : Yeah, I think that&#8217;s a very important question to examine. And I wanted to start by first, you know, talking about something that&#8217;s probably on the minds of a lot of people, that, you know, Hillary Clinton is a woman. She is, as others have stated, is all but certainly going to get the Democratic Party nomination, and it would be fantastic to have a woman in the White House, you know, showing the strides that women are making. And I certainly understand where that&#8217;s coming from. But, you know, we have to look at her record, and not only at her record. Her record speaks for itself. This is not the record of anybody who would—even remotely could claim that they were upholding the interests of women or children, as, you know, Robert has clearly stated—you know, the gutting of welfare and all the other things that she&#8217;s been involved in.
But it&#8217;s also a larger question of the Democratic Party establishment itself. I mean, let&#8217;s assume hypothetically that Hillary Clinton wasn&#8217;t a cynical opportunist, which she is, but she was genuinely going to represent the interests of the, you know, tens of millions of working families that are looking for genuine representation. Or let&#8217;s say hypothetically somebody else, who may be less of a warmongering representative, gets the Democratic Party nomination. The question is: Are they going to be able to carry out anything like a working-class agenda, anything remotely approaching social change, if they get to the White House on the basis of the Democratic Party apparatus, which rests completely and utterly on the Wall Street money? And that&#8217;s the question we are examining.
Ultimately, the argument of lesser-evilism, if we are going to stay with lesser-evilism, that argument works until perpetuity. It&#8217;s never going to be a good time to break from the two-party, or, you know, the two-big-business-party machinery, and build an independent alternative, because you can always make the claim that, well, you know, if we ran a left candidate this year, in 2016, it&#8217;s not going to work, so let&#8217;s just hunker down and vote for Hillary because she&#8217;s better than the Republicans. But what that lesser-evilism argument is missing is the big, big chunk of America that is completely disengaged from politics; if you look at the approval ratings of U.S. Congress, if you look at the percentages of people who go to the polls, and if you look at the polls that show that 60 percent of Americans are fed up and frustrated with the two-party system and want something different, you&#8217;re missing that whole big chunk of America that is completely missing in this esoteric argument about whether Hillary is better or some other candidate should get the nomination.
Ultimately, the question that needs to arise at this moment is to—is the responsibility of the left. This is a responsibility of the left to begin the process of building a left alternative, a political structure that represents working families, because, whether we like it or not, there is a gaping vacuum where the most of America is not present, and if we don&#8217;t occupy that vacuum, the right will. And it is absolutely an urgent task. And for people who might think that, well, you know, people aren&#8217;t ready for it, no, they are absolutely ready for it. And as you said, Amy, you know, we&#8217;ve shown in Seattle that you can not only run as an anticorporate candidate, as an alternative to Democrats, but you can also win. And after winning the election, you can actually carry out a very, very effective and successful working-class agenda.
And, you know, lastly, about the—you know, I know that arguments will come up about, well, you know, we can&#8217;t do this at the national level; it&#8217;s OK to do it at the local level. I think that&#8217;s a false dichotomy, because Seattle is a good example. Here, there are no Republicans to speak of. There is just a Democratic Party establishment. All the problems that people face are at the doorstep of the Democrats. And this year, in my re-election year, you will see the Democratic Party establishment going to war against my campaign and making sure—trying to make sure that I don&#8217;t get re-elected. Why? Because at the end of the day, that establishment does not support the agenda of working people. What about climate change, action on climate change, student debt, single-payer healthcare, the gutting of public education, attacks on teachers&#8217; unions? All of this lies at the doorstep of the Democratic Party establishment, and, you know, working people need an alternative.
AMY GOODMAN : Robert Scheer, one of your books, The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street . Talk about the Clinton partnership. When you talk about Clinton Democrats, are you talking about Bill Clinton? Are you talking about Bill and Hillary Clinton? And what that means? The way it&#8217;s being discussed today with the rollout of Hillary Clinton is, you know, the role her husband will play. Will he be behind the scenes? Is he a liability? Is he an asset? But isn&#8217;t the true nature of their relationship, they are a fierce, formidable political partnership? How do you separate what each of them represents?
ROBERT SCHEER : Well, I don&#8217;t think there is any separation. Actually, Bill Clinton might be a bit more progressive. He actually had some positive things to say about whistleblowers in the NSA , whereas Hillary just wanted to—you know, she actually had the nerve to blast Snowden. She said, &quot;What&#8217;s he doing in Russia?&quot; as if she didn&#8217;t know that they yanked his passport, and he had—that&#8217;s where he was in transit. Of all—I mean, this is disgusting, when you think about it. Here we have this brave 29-year-old, at the time, who dared to tell us what this government, that Hillary Clinton was a key part of—this is not ancient history. This is the Obama administration that has jailed and gone after more whistleblowers than all previous American presidents combined. And Hillary Clinton dares attack Edward Snowden for telling us—
AMY GOODMAN : Well, let me—let—
ROBERT SCHEER : —what Hillary Clinton failed to tell us.
AMY GOODMAN : Rather than you characterize what she said, let&#8217;s go to Hillary Clinton commenting on Edward Snowden. She was interviewed by The Guardian , which first released the revelations based on the documents of Edward Snowden.
HILLARY CLINTON : Well, I would say, first of all, that Edward Snowden broke our laws, and that cannot be ignored or brushed aside. Secondly, I believe that if his primary concern was stirring a debate in our country over the tension between privacy and security, there were other ways of doing it, instead of stealing an enormous amount of information that had nothing to do with the U.S. or American citizens. I would say, thirdly, that there are many people in our history who have raised serious questions about government behavior. They&#8217;ve done it either with or without whistleblower protection, and they have stood and faced whatever the reaction was to make their case in public.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Hillary Clinton commenting on Edward Snowden. Robert Scheer, your response?
ROBERT SCHEER : Yeah, she has no respect for courage in speaking up for human rights. She&#8217;s a total hypocrite. My goodness, this guy engaged—he did what Daniel Ellsberg did, and she would have condemned him, as well. I mean, these are people who told us what our government didn&#8217;t tell us. She lied to us.
And, you know—but let me just point out, I mean, Joe&#8217;s point, somehow she&#8217;s OK, or—and I forget your writer from the—by the way, let me just say, I was in Seattle recently, and I&#8217;ll say again, if your guest from Seattle were to run for president, I&#8217;d vote for her over Hillary any day of the week. And I&#8217;d vote for Chafee over Hillary any day of the week, because he&#8217;s a true moderate. And I would also give serious consideration to Rand Paul, who took on the banks, who was opposed to invading Iraq, who has actually registered caution.
But we&#8217;re not talking ancient history here. Hillary Clinton was in favor of a very belligerent attitude in Syria, which has led to the unleashing of ISIS . She&#8217;s the one that said, &quot;Oh, Assad is just the worst thing going,&quot; just like they said Saddam Hussein, just like they said Gaddafi. So you look at Libya now, you look at Iraq, you look at Syria, a terrible mess. And yet Hillary Clinton seems to have no compunction that their foundation that her daughter—you know, she says, &quot;I want for every child what my granddaughter has.&quot; Well, your granddaughter has a father who works for Goldman Sachs and a daughter who now works for a foundation that gets an enormous amount of money from Saudi Arabia and other people who have actually been the backers of ISIS . What do you stand for? Where are you going to get your $2.5 billion to be president, if not kissing up to Wall Street, which you&#8217;ve been doing as senator? I mean, what are we talking about here? This is a person who can talk a good game, but is totally disingenuous and betraying the very people she seems to care about. You know—
AMY GOODMAN : Joe Conason, if you could respond to Robert Scheer?
JOE CONASON : Well, I mean, it would be great to bring the whole conversation back to reality, because it seems disconnected. When somebody says, &quot;Well, Seattle is the perfect example of politics in America,&quot; no—and &quot;There&#8217;s no Republican Party there,&quot; well, I&#8217;m sorry, there is a Republican Party in America. It is in fact the dominant party right now. So, to claim, well, Seattle—we can all be like Seattle—we&#8217;re not all like Seattle. That is not what&#8217;s happening in the United States politically.
So you have to start with where you are and the choices you really have, OK? That&#8217;s my view. I mean, it&#8217;s fine to have these discussions and fantasize about whatever it is you&#8217;d like to see happen, and I share a lot of the aspirations that anybody would have about a more progressive government in the United States. But here we are now. And the choice is going to be somebody like Rand Paul—I guess Bob is OK with him wanting to abolish Social Security and Medicare—great—or someone like Hillary Clinton, who won&#8217;t do that, you know, for instance. So, going towards November 2016—
AMY GOODMAN : Well, let&#8217;s—
JOE CONASON : —those are what the choices are.
AMY GOODMAN : I want Robert Scheer to answer—
JOE CONASON : Well, wait—well—
AMY GOODMAN : —answer that point, and I&#8217;ll come right back to you.
JOE CONASON : OK.
ROBERT SCHEER : Oh, come on. I mean, the fact is, Rand Paul—you know, if you want to have me rise to the bait, Rand Paul had the integrity to oppose the bailout that bailed out the banks but did not bail out Americans. Rand Paul had the integrity—
JOE CONASON : Saved us from a depression, Bob.
ROBERT SCHEER : —to criticize the Federal Reserve when it was catering to the banks. Rand Paul had the courage—
JOE CONASON : And he&#8217;s lifted every regulation on banks, Bob. Be honest.
ROBERT SCHEER : —and he&#8217;s being attacked by other Republicans—wait a minute—for opposing—
JOE CONASON : Be honest.
ROBERT SCHEER : —an imperial policy in the Mideast—
JOE CONASON : No, he beat—
ROBERT SCHEER : —that has led to absolute ruin and disaster.
JOE CONASON : He&#8217;s changed that view, Bob, because he wants Sheldon Adelson&#8217;s money.
ROBERT SCHEER : He&#8217;s had—wait a minute. Rand Paul has—wait a minute, you&#8217;re interrupting me, Joe.
JOE CONASON : I&#8217;m sorry.
ROBERT SCHEER : You know, Rand Paul had the courage—
JOE CONASON : I was interrupted so you could rant on.
ROBERT SCHEER : Rand Paul had the courage to challenge the NSA , that Hillary Clinton has celebrated. Hillary Clinton has celebrated the surveillance state. She has celebrated using this war on terror—
JOE CONASON : When did she do that?
ROBERT SCHEER : —to take away our freedom. Rand Paul had at least the courage to challenge that. And, by the way, why aren&#8217;t you mentioning Chafee? Why aren&#8217;t you mentioning more moderate Republicans?
JOE CONASON : I would—I&#8217;ll mention Chafee, or Chafee, actually.
ROBERT SCHEER : And why are you so happy with a lesser evil that is truly evil?
JOE CONASON : Hey, let&#8217;s talk about Lincoln Chafee.
AMY GOODMAN : OK.
JOE CONASON : Who did he support for president in 2004? I&#8217;m just curious. Since he&#8217;s now made the Iraq War the issue that he wants to run on, puzzlingly, who did he support for president in 2004?
ROBERT SCHEER : He supported the candidate—
JOE CONASON : Who did he support for Senate leadership in 2004? Who did—you know, he must have supported George W. Bush.
ROBERT SCHEER : So you don&#8217;t consider—you don&#8217;t consider him—
JOE CONASON : Or maybe he supported John Kerry, who also voted for the resolution. Come on. This is just silly.
ROBERT SCHEER : You don&#8217;t consider him a moderate Republican in the Eisenhower tradition? &mdash;
JOE CONASON : I don&#8217;t know what he is anymore? I don&#8217;t know what he is.
ROBERT SCHEER : And you don&#8217;t think an Eisenhower—look, let me ask you, seriously—
JOE CONASON : I don&#8217;t think he&#8217;s relevant, Bob. He&#8217;s not relevant.
ROBERT SCHEER : Don&#8217;t you think Hillary Clinton has all the ingredients of a Margaret Thatcher?
JOE CONASON : No, I don&#8217;t.
ROBERT SCHEER : Isn&#8217;t she? She&#8217;s this Cold War—
JOE CONASON : And neither does—by the way, by the way, let&#8217;s stop for a second.
ROBERT SCHEER : Yeah.
JOE CONASON : You want to talk about working people and who they may or may not support. I&#8217;ll tell you, she will have the support of every labor union in this country. In fact, she probably already does. Her candidacy yesterday was welcomed by Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL - CIO , which represents a few more workers than you do, welcoming her into the race and saying, &quot;I&#8217;m waiting to see what she says about these issues.&quot; He&#8217;s not thinking about the Iraq War resolution or any of this other stuff that, admittedly, is relevant, but is not the pressing issue for 2016.
OK, the pressing issue for 2016 is: Do we have a radical-right Republican government that, in all three branches, which will end up with, I don&#8217;t know, seven, eight Supreme Court justices, like Alito, or do we have a moderate Democratic administration, where, yes, there&#8217;s going to be a lot of tugging and pulling within the party, within Congress, over which issues are to be brought to the fore, what the president&#8217;s position will be, what she should do if she&#8217;s president? That, to me, is a better situation for working families and all Americans—by the way, people around the world—than the idea of a President Rand Paul or a President Ted Cruz or somebody who is going to dismantle every protection that working families in this country have.
ROBERT SCHEER : Well, what about President Elizabeth Warren? Why are we restrict—
JOE CONASON : What about it? She&#8217;s not running, Bob.
ROBERT SCHEER : Why are we restricted—but why aren&#8217;t you encouraging some more progressive person to run. For God&#8217;s sake, Dennis Kucinich, anyone. Why are we stuck—why are we stuck—
JOE CONASON : It&#8217;s not up to—they&#8217;re not going to listen to me as to whether they should run.
ROBERT SCHEER : You&#8217;ll have to answer the question, Joe: Why are we stuck with someone like Hillary Clinton, who has a proven record of betraying the progressive ideas?
AMY GOODMAN : Michelle Goldberg, do you want to get a word in here?
ROBERT SCHEER : Why are we stuck with this? Why is this the choice?
AMY GOODMAN : We have to break, and then we&#8217;re going to come back to this discussion. You are watching, listening to—and you can read them online at democracynow.org—Robert Scheer, author and editor-in-chief at Truthdig , his latest book, They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy . We&#8217;re also joined here in New York by Joe Conason, who is the author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton . Michelle Goldberg is with us, senior contributing writer at The Nation . And Kshama Sawant, the Socialist city councilmember from Seattle, who pushed for a $15 minimum wage for all workers in Seattle and won. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : We are joined by Joe Conason, editor-in-chief of The National Memo ; Robert Scheer, among his books, They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy , that&#8217;s just out; in Seattle, we&#8217;re joined by Kshama Sawant, Socialist city councilmember; and also in New York, Michelle Goldberg, senior contributing writer at The Nation , author of several books, including The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World , her latest piece , &quot;Hillary Clinton&#8217;s Feminist Family Values.&quot; So, this debate about who will represent a progressive America, weigh in, Michelle.
MICHELLE GOLDBERG : Well, we have this debate every four, every eight years. And, you know, Bob Scheer asked, &quot;Why are we stuck with these two choices?&quot; And part of the reason that we&#8217;re stuck with these two choices is because of the way left-wing activists approach electoral politics, as opposed to the way right-wing activists approach electoral politics. You know, my first book was about the religious right and their influence in American politics. And they kind of never waited until presidential elections and then wrang their hands and said, you know, &quot;These candidates don&#8217;t represent our values, so we&#8217;re going to stay home or form a third party or vote for some spoiler candidate.&quot; What they did is actually what Kshama Sawant is doing and, you know, kind of left-wing activists who are working at the grassroots are doing all across the country, is that you have to build an infrastructure. You kind of have to build within the party. You have to take over the party apparatus before you can expect the party to serve your ends. You can&#8217;t simply kind of come in every eight years and say, &quot;Why can&#8217;t they put up someone completely different, you know, or why can&#8217;t we have a third party that operates outside of the constraints of the American two-party system?&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : By the way, we haven&#8217;t mentioned Bernie Sanders, and there&#8217;s a lot of discussion, as he travels the country, about the possibility of a candidacy. Would it be with the Democrats? He caucuses with the Democrats, but he is an independent. In fact, he&#8217;s a Socialist from Vermont.
MICHELLE GOLDBERG : Look, Bernie Sanders is probably closest to the candidate whose views align with my own. But I think, like Joe said, you go to an election with the country you have, not the country that you want. The idea that this huge bloc of disengaged voters are secret socialists just waiting to be mobilized is just not borne out by any data out there. If you want a liberal electorate, you have to build it and organize it. You can&#8217;t just pretend that it&#8217;s in hiding and will appear if only the right candidate—if only kind of the corporate Democrats don&#8217;t stop the right candidate from putting their name forward. The votes just aren&#8217;t there. The infrastructure just isn&#8217;t there. And so, what you do, I think—
AMY GOODMAN : Don&#8217;t polls show that the country is more liberal than the leaders? And what about the issue of Republicans appealing to their base—
ROBERT SCHEER : And they&#8217;re more anti-Wall Street.
AMY GOODMAN : Their—
ROBERT SCHEER : They&#8217;re more anti-Wall Street than Hillary Clinton—
AMY GOODMAN : Robert Scheer.
ROBERT SCHEER : —by a long shot. You know, this is nonsense.
JOE CONASON : Some polls show that.
ROBERT SCHEER : Of course they are. They&#8217;re very critical of Wall Street.
JOE CONASON : Other polls show other things. I mean—
ROBERT SCHEER : Look, you even actually had a chance to stop that bailout, which was an atrocity, and you had plenty of Republicans, and it was the Democrats who betrayed. Let&#8217;s be serious here. Are you telling me the vast majority of Americans prefer Wall Street the way Hillary Clinton has catered to them? Or would they actually support a populist? I agree with you, Bernie Sanders would be great right now, you know? But to tell—you know, it&#8217;s the Democrats who have destroyed the possibility of grassroots organizing.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, speaking of Socialists, let&#8217;s bring—
ROBERT SCHEER : And on a personal note, let me tell you—
MICHELLE GOLDBERG : How have they destroyed the possibility of grassroots organizing?
ROBERT SCHEER : Let me say—I just want to say, on a personal note, I ran for Congress against a so-called establishment Democrat, Jeffrey Cohelan, a long time ago. I got 45 percent of the vote. And as a result of that, Ron Dellums took that seat. Ron Dellums was the best person we had in Congress for a long time, because we showed that people in Oakland and in that community, in Berkeley, could support a progressive candidate.
MICHELLE GOLDBERG : Of course, we can, in Berkeley.
ROBERT SCHEER : You don&#8217;t have to—it was Oakland, and it was a good part of Contra Costa. It was what was considered a safe—
JOE CONASON : Oh, dear.
ROBERT SCHEER : —moderate Democratic district. And Ron Dellums came in, raising all of the issues that I&#8217;ve been raising today, and he raised them in Congress. And you can do it. And I think that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening in Seattle, where you have—you know, where you have a choice.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, Kshama Sawant—I want to bring Kshama Sawant in, back into this discussion. The idea of Republicans appealing to their base, but Democrats running away from their base?
KSHAMA SAWANT : Well, I think that it can&#8217;t just simply—it&#8217;s too simplistic to say that Republicans are appealing to their base because their base is right-wing, and then Democrats are not appealing to their base, which is progressive. That completely belies the reality that if you look at poll after poll on social justice issues, on social and economic issues, the vast majority of Americans are well to the left of the choices that are presented to them in the form of Democrats or Republicans. I completely disagree with this idea that somehow the electorate is not progressive and that you have to somehow, you know, generate that and that it can be artificially manufactured. No, as a matter of fact, Americans do want an alternative. They have been crying out for an alternative. There&#8217;s a huge vacuum here that is not being filled. And it is really up to the left to do that. It&#8217;s not good enough for the left to say that, &quot;Well, you know, we can&#8217;t really have a spoiler vote this year, and that&#8217;s why we are going to support Hillary.&quot; That is an abdication of responsibility. We have to build an alternative. There is no shortcut. Unfortunately, for us, there is no shortcut. It is going to be hard work of building. I agree with Michelle, it is all about organizing. But that organizing from the grassroots, that building of mass movement, which we absolutely have to do, has to incorporate a real political alternative to this dog-and-pony show that we&#8217;re going to see in 2016 yet again. And, you know, look at—
AMY GOODMAN : Joe—let me just ask Joe Conason, and when you&#8217;re invited in the corporate media, you&#8217;ll be having debates with Republicans. You&#8217;ll be debating—it&#8217;ll be very much that spectrum. This is opening up this discussion. What about the concern of many in the Democratic establishment that Hillary Clinton doesn&#8217;t have a viable opponent in the primaries, engineered by the Clintons or not, that that could actually weaken her?
JOE CONASON : You know, some people think that. Some people think the opposite and say, well, you know, Bill Bradley didn&#8217;t really strengthen Al Gore in 2000, and there&#8217;s really not an example that you can give of a candidate for president who was made stronger by a primary opponent. So, it could be—I don&#8217;t know, actually. I think she certainly—
AMY GOODMAN : President Obama?
JOE CONASON : Well, was he made stronger? That&#8217;s a good question. He was made stronger certainly when the Clintons decided to support him for election in 2008 and 2012, and probably helped to keep him—get him in office and keep him in office. But, look, I mean, Bob Scheer ran for Congress 50 years ago, just so we put this in perspective. Fifty years later—and it was a noble cause that he was supporting, antiwar cause. I admired him very much when I was growing up. And 50 years later, we are in the same position that we were then. There is no burgeoning left alternative to the left of the Democratic Party in this country.
AMY GOODMAN : Ten seconds for this, other three guests. Michelle Goldberg, right now, as we wrap up, your comment on what you want to see happen in this next year?
MICHELLE GOLDBERG : What I want to see happen is for people to organize within the Democratic Party to pull Hillary Clinton to the left, because I think that, for better or for worse, she is responsive to political pressure.
AMY GOODMAN : Robert Scheer, eight seconds?
ROBERT SCHEER : Yeah, I supported Obama, and it was easier to challenge the government when Bush was president than when Obama was president. So it is not good for democracy to have a lesser evil as our candidate.
AMY GOODMAN : Kshama Sawant?
KSHAMA SAWANT : I would like to see Bernie Sanders run as an independent political, anticorporate alternative to Democrats and Republicans. And I would like the support of the left for me to win my re-election, because that is absolutely critical for the left. And so—
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to have to leave it there, Kshama Sawant, Socialist Alternative city councilmember in Seattle; Joe Conason, editor-in-chief of The National Memo . Thank you so much to Nation writer Michelle Goldberg and to Robert Scheer, who&#8217;s author of They Know Everything About You . AMYGOODMAN: Former secretary of state, senator and first lady, Hillary Clinton, has formally entered the 2016 race for the White House in a bid to become the first woman U.S. president. If she wins the Democratic Party’s nomination, she’ll be the first woman presidential nominee in the party’s history. Clinton made her announcement in a two-minute video released online Sunday. In it, she focused on ordinary Americans starting new phases of life, including two men getting married, a woman preparing to retire, an interracial couple renovating their home, immigrants speaking Spanish, and a man starting a business.

GAYMAN: I’m getting married this summer to someone I really care about.

CHILD: I’m going to be in a play, and I’m going to be in a fish costume. We’re little tiny fishes.

HOMERENOVATOR 2: But most importantly, we really just want to teach our dog to quit eating the trash.

HOMERENOVATOR 1: And so, we have high hopes for 2015, that that’s going to happen.

WORKER: I’ve started a new career recently. This is a fifth generation company, which means a lot to me. This country was founded on hard work, and it really feels good to be a part of that.

HILLARYCLINTON: I’m getting ready to do something, too. I’m running for president. Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion, so you can do more than just get by: You can get ahead—and stay ahead. Because when families are strong, America is strong. So I’m hitting the road to earn your vote, because it’s your time. And I hope you’ll join me on this journey.

AMYGOODMAN: Hillary Clinton first ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 but lost to President Obama. Long considered the Democratic front-runner, she has been expected to declare her candidacy for months. Democratic candidates who may join her in her bid include former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, former Rhode Island Governor and Senator Lincoln Chafee, and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb. This comes as Senator Marco Rubio is expected to announce his bid today for the Republican presidential nomination. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky announced his plans to run last week, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz launched his candidacy in March.

Well, to discuss Clinton’s second bid for the White House, we host a roundtable discussion.

Here in New York, Joe Conason joins us, editor-in-chief of The National Memo, co-editor of The Investigative Fund and author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton.

We’re also joined by Michelle Goldberg, senior contributing writer at The Nation, author of several books, including The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World. Her latest article is headlined "Hillary Clinton’s Feminist Family Values."

In Los Angeles, we’re joined by Robert Scheer, longtime journalist, editor of Truthdig, author of many books. His latest is They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy. Scheer is also the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street and also Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, [Reagan], and Clinton and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush.

And in Seattle, we’re joined by Kshama Sawant, a Socialist city councilmember. She helped win a $15-an-hour minimum wage for all workers in Seattle in one of her first moves when she became a member of the City Council. She’s a member of the Socialist Alternative, a nationwide organization of social and economic justice activists. She is up for re-election this year.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Joe Conason, let’s begin with you. Your assessment of Hillary Clinton, her bid yesterday, the much-awaited announcement, and why you support her?

JOECONASON: Well, I don’t support her. I’m neutral in the primary, as I was the last time, when she ran against Barack Obama. I didn’t endorse her then. In fact, I was probably tougher on her than I was on Obama. So the idea that I’m endorsing her for anything is not right.

But, I mean, I was interested yesterday to see her announce, because she is clearly striving for a different tone. Last time, I and others wrote about the kind of baroque kind of almost coronation that they seemed to expect in her campaign: She was inevitable; she had more money than Obama or anyone else, and therefore she was going to just cruise to the nomination. And, of course, that turned out to be completely wrong. They made many mistakes in that campaign. It was a campaign that was divided against itself, in many cases. And she lost narrowly, but she lost. And I think, looking back on that, this time she has attempted to roll out her candidacy this time in a very different way—a modest tone, a tone of "I want to be your champion," a slightly populist tone that I think is appropriate to this moment. And we’ll see what happens from here.

AMYGOODMAN: Kshama Sawant in Seattle, your response to the rollout of Hillary Clinton’s campaign? But what we’re going to talk about today, overall, though, is her record—this is a person with a proven record—and assessing what that has been, from first lady to senator to secretary of state, a previous presidential candidate, and now again. Kshama?

KSHAMASAWANT: Well, as Joe was saying, you know, she is now trying to use a veneer of a populist image. But look, this is a person who has hired 200 advisers to tell her how she can look populist without angering her wealthy donors. And ultimately the question is absolutely about her record as a warmongering secretary of state who used her position to emphasize the drone attacks, to be a vocal proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and to use her position to promote the interests of multinational corporations at the expense of the interests of working people. And ultimately, you know, this candidate, if she is backed by the Democratic Party establishment apparatus, is going to be the Wall Street candidate. And fundamentally, we have to ask ourselves the question: Is the Democratic Party establishment ever, despite the populist imagery or rhetoric they may use, going to be—ever going to be a genuine vehicle in any way to promote the interests of working families?

And she’s been missing in action on the $15 demand. The $15 demand is taking over nationally, and she, like other people in the Democratic Party establishment, have been completely silent. She was on the board of Wal-Mart. Alice Walton has donated the maximum to her super PAC, to Ready for Hillary super PAC. And Wal-Mart is a corporation that has a a notorious union-busting record. And the $25,000 that Alice Walton donated to her is well more than the hourly employees at Wal-Mart make in a year, two-thirds of whom are women. And so I think we have to be very clear that she is going to represent the continuation of what we’ve seen in the last several decades, including Obama’s presidency, that this is going to be a Wall Street-controlled White House, and we need an alternative.

AMYGOODMAN: Michelle Goldberg, your response to the rollout yesterday and to your concerns about Hillary Clinton, whether you support her?

MICHELLEGOLDBERG: Well, I’m certainly going to support her versus whatever candidate the Republicans put up. You know, I’ve been pretty critical of Hillary Clinton over the years. I didn’t support her in 2008. In fact, I was furious with a lot of the older feminists who suggested that it was incumbent on women to vote for Hillary.

I was impressed with the rollout because, I mean, what’s interesting is that Hillary has been in public life for such a long time, and yet sometimes it can be hard to pin down exactly what she stands for, in part because she is a very changeable, chameleon-like candidate. You know, there was kind of Hillary the feminist lawyer, who worked on behalf of children’s rights. There’s the Hillary the senator, who sponsored a flag-burning amendment. You know, there’s now Hillary the grandmother, who’s talking about paid family leave and those sorts of things. My sense is, is that as many different kind of incarnations as she had, the one constant in her career, and maybe the place where she’s the most authentic, is in her concern for women and families, women and children—you know, the work that she did on maternal mortality when she was in the State Department, for example. And so, inasmuch as that’s going to be the center of this campaign and inasmuch as she is able to marry this kind of family-focused progressivism to women’s issues, like paid—or not women’s issues, family issues, but parental issues, like paid family leave, early childhood education, the sort of things that have never been at the center of a presidential election before, you know, not only do I think that that is a really good thing for feminism, but I also think that that is the best side of Hillary Clinton.

ROBERTSCHEER: Yeah, I think it’s absurd to suggest she’s a friend of children who are in need or families. This is a woman who, when her husband was governor, I first met her at that time, when I went down to interview him for the Los Angeles Times and he was starting his presidential run. And they were bragging about their welfare reform, which destroyed what existed of support for poor children in Arkansas. Then, as president, her husband, with her full-throated approval, destroyed the aid to families with dependent children, which 70 percent of the people on that program were children. It was the major federal program to help poor people and poor families, and in the cynicism of the Clinton administration, they destroyed that program. And we have no—we don’t even have an accounting of poor children anymore. They’re off the radar. So, that’s just utter nonsense.

And then, her husband—you know, after all, she, again, was a full-throated support. She was very close to Robert Rubin, to Lawrence Summers, to the people in the Clinton administration who gave us the radical deregulation of Wall Street, which, you know, caused incredible misery and the Great Recession—the Clinton signing on the collateralized debt obligation law which allowed all that junk to be legal, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, the Financial Services Modernization Act, the reverse Glass-Steagall. So they’re the ones that opened the door to the Wall Street thieves that brought on the Great Recession. And then, as senator, she’s carried water for Wall Street faithfully.

And then, finally, you know, if we’re going to run for—of somebody who has experience as secretary of state, I’d rather support John Kerry. After all, it’s been a great relief to see Kerry as opposed to Hillary Clinton. We finally have some rational foreign policy and peacemaking with Iran, with Cuba. Where was Hillary Clinton? And let me say, one reason I could never vote for Hillary Clinton is that she—her attack on Edward Snowden, her attack on the whistleblowers, to call them traitors, to talk about these people. And here is a woman who knew what the government was doing in spying on the American people. You know, she didn’t tell us. She didn’t trust the State Department with her email, but she never told us that the State Department, the CIA and the NSA were spying on the emails of all the Americans. No, but she thinks that’s fine. She’s just going to keep her email in her garage, you know, so I find her to be a center of cynicism and opportunism, and really quite reckless.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Our guests are Robert Scheer in Los Angeles, Kshama Sawant in Seattle, Michelle Goldberg here in New York, as well as Joe Conason. This is Democracy Now! Hillary Clinton has entered the 2016 presidential race. We’ll be back in a minute.

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AMYGOODMAN: President Obama said over the weekend Hillary Clinton would be a, quote, "excellent president." He was speaking in Panama City Saturday, before she announced her candidacy.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: With respect to Hillary Clinton, I’ll make my comments very brief. She was a formidable candidate in 2008. She was a great supporter of mine in the general election. She was an outstanding secretary of state. She is my friend. I think she would be an excellent president.

AMYGOODMAN: This is then-Senator Hillary Clinton back in 2002, ahead of the vote on the resolution to authorize the use of war—the use of war against Iraq.

SEN. HILLARYCLINTON: Because bipartisan support for this resolution makes success in the United Nations more likely, and therefore war less likely, and because a good-faith effort by the United States, even if it fails, will bring more allies and legitimacy to our cause, I have concluded, after careful and serious consideration, that a vote for the resolution best serves the security of our nation. If we were to defeat this resolution or pass it with only a few Democrats, I am concerned that those who want to pretend this problem will go away with delay will oppose any U.N. resolution calling for unrestricted inspections. This is a very difficult vote. This is probably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. Any vote that might lead to war should be hard. But I cast it with conviction.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Hillary Clinton in 2002. She was joining a number of other Democrats, as well as Republicans, voting for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq. Our roundtable today discussing Hillary Clinton entering the 2016 presidential race—if she were to win, she would be the first woman president of the United States—is Joe Conason, he’s author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton; Michelle Goldberg, senior contributing writer at The Nation; Robert Scheer, editor of Truthdig, his latest book, They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy; and in Seattle, Kshama Sawant, Socialist city councilmember in Seattle.

Joe Conason, you wrote the five—you have been covering Hillary and Bill Clinton for a very long time. What about, first, what Obama said, the significance of what he said on Saturday, and Hillary Clinton, when she was a senator, voting for the war with Iraq, something that became a major issue—many say the reason she did not win the Democratic nomination in 2008?

JOECONASON: Well, it definitely didn’t help. And she eventually admitted that that was a bad vote, she shouldn’t have cast that vote. I was very critical of the war and her at the time, I think you know. I probably appeared on here to talk about it. But that is now 13 years ago. John Kerry, who Bob recommended as a better presidential candidate, also voted for that resolution, and lots of people supported him for president the year after the Iraq War began, so—including me. So—

AMYGOODMAN: He also lost.

JOECONASON: He also lost, not by much, but he won the Democratic nomination. Look, I think that’s something that she needs to be held to account for, and she has been, and she will be again. It’s not the full picture of her years as a senator or her view of foreign policy.

The second thing I would say is, what the president said is kind of more interesting and significant now, because he is the leader of the Democratic Party. And her service to him, both politically and in government, I think, has united the Democratic Party, much more than it was in 2008, behind her. If you look at poll numbers, she leads any conceivable opponent to her within the Democratic Party in the primary by 50 points, or something like that. And the reason is that the Obama faction of the party, if you want to put it that way—the party was almost evenly divided in 2008. The Obama supporters have rallied behind Hillary, in minority communities, feminists. You know, all of the people who might have been for Obama the last time are with Hillary now, or at least many, many of them. So, I think that was what mattered about what he said.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to turn to comments on Hillary Clinton made by Lincoln Chafee, a former U.S. senator, governor from Rhode Island, who announced Thursday he is exploring a run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Chafee served in the Senate as a Republican but left the party in 2007 to become an independent. He actively supported President Obama in 2008 and '12. Chafee was elected governor in 2010 as an independent, and in 2013 he became a Democrat. Speaking to The Washington Post, he criticized Clinton's support of the 2002 vote on the invasion of Iraq. He said, quote, "I don’t think anybody should be president of the United States that made that mistake. ... It’s a huge mistake and we live with broad, broad ramifications today of instability not only in the Middle East but far beyond and the loss of American credibility. There were no weapons of mass destruction," he said. Then he appeared on MSNBC later the same day and explained why the Iraq vote is still important.

LINCOLNCHAFEE: It’s relevant to what we read about every day in the papers in the Middle East and in other areas of the world—ISIS and what’s happening in Nigeria and how we confront some of these extremist insurgencies. And we were successful in the past, over the years, by having good alliances and having good American credibility, and that’s been squandered by this bad decision—even though it’s a long time ago, I agree with that, back in 2002, but the ramifications are still felt today.

AMYGOODMAN: So that’s former Governor and Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who may throw his hat in the ring as a Democrat. Michelle Goldberg, your response, saying—his saying that anyone who would vote for war in Iraq, given what has happened then and today, is not qualified to be president?

MICHELLEGOLDBERG: You know, I think that there’s obviously something to that. I would say that if you’re kind of questioning someone’s judgment, I would question the judgment of someone who didn’t realize that the Republican Party wasn’t a place for decent people until 2007, you know, and so—you know, I think that that’s probably the best case that he has against her, and certainly that vote is the reason I didn’t support her in 2008.

But I also think that if you look at kind of who the field is, you know, I’m someone who believes that the lesser of two evils is less evil. And she’s, to me, by far not—I mean, at a certain point, it doesn’t even really matter, right? She’s almost certainly going to be the nominee, and she’s going to be leagues better than whoever she’s running against on the Republican Party. And as I said, she’s a kind of chameleon-like candidate who is, for better or worse, a person who often bows to political pressure. And so, this is the—this is the worst thing about her, but it also opens a potential opportunity for progressives, who can try to, I think, if they get organized and try to work within the system as opposed to working as spoilers, exert pressure on her from the other direction.

AMYGOODMAN: Kshama Sawant, what about that argument, that the candidate people are going to get to vote for in 2016, this lesser-of-two-evils argument—now, of two evils? You’re with Socialist Alternative, which is a third party. Many did not expect you would win a council seat in the Seattle City Council, but you did. What about that issue of the lesser of two evils?

KSHAMASAWANT: Yeah, I think that’s a very important question to examine. And I wanted to start by first, you know, talking about something that’s probably on the minds of a lot of people, that, you know, Hillary Clinton is a woman. She is, as others have stated, is all but certainly going to get the Democratic Party nomination, and it would be fantastic to have a woman in the White House, you know, showing the strides that women are making. And I certainly understand where that’s coming from. But, you know, we have to look at her record, and not only at her record. Her record speaks for itself. This is not the record of anybody who would—even remotely could claim that they were upholding the interests of women or children, as, you know, Robert has clearly stated—you know, the gutting of welfare and all the other things that she’s been involved in.

But it’s also a larger question of the Democratic Party establishment itself. I mean, let’s assume hypothetically that Hillary Clinton wasn’t a cynical opportunist, which she is, but she was genuinely going to represent the interests of the, you know, tens of millions of working families that are looking for genuine representation. Or let’s say hypothetically somebody else, who may be less of a warmongering representative, gets the Democratic Party nomination. The question is: Are they going to be able to carry out anything like a working-class agenda, anything remotely approaching social change, if they get to the White House on the basis of the Democratic Party apparatus, which rests completely and utterly on the Wall Street money? And that’s the question we are examining.

Ultimately, the argument of lesser-evilism, if we are going to stay with lesser-evilism, that argument works until perpetuity. It’s never going to be a good time to break from the two-party, or, you know, the two-big-business-party machinery, and build an independent alternative, because you can always make the claim that, well, you know, if we ran a left candidate this year, in 2016, it’s not going to work, so let’s just hunker down and vote for Hillary because she’s better than the Republicans. But what that lesser-evilism argument is missing is the big, big chunk of America that is completely disengaged from politics; if you look at the approval ratings of U.S. Congress, if you look at the percentages of people who go to the polls, and if you look at the polls that show that 60 percent of Americans are fed up and frustrated with the two-party system and want something different, you’re missing that whole big chunk of America that is completely missing in this esoteric argument about whether Hillary is better or some other candidate should get the nomination.

Ultimately, the question that needs to arise at this moment is to—is the responsibility of the left. This is a responsibility of the left to begin the process of building a left alternative, a political structure that represents working families, because, whether we like it or not, there is a gaping vacuum where the most of America is not present, and if we don’t occupy that vacuum, the right will. And it is absolutely an urgent task. And for people who might think that, well, you know, people aren’t ready for it, no, they are absolutely ready for it. And as you said, Amy, you know, we’ve shown in Seattle that you can not only run as an anticorporate candidate, as an alternative to Democrats, but you can also win. And after winning the election, you can actually carry out a very, very effective and successful working-class agenda.

And, you know, lastly, about the—you know, I know that arguments will come up about, well, you know, we can’t do this at the national level; it’s OK to do it at the local level. I think that’s a false dichotomy, because Seattle is a good example. Here, there are no Republicans to speak of. There is just a Democratic Party establishment. All the problems that people face are at the doorstep of the Democrats. And this year, in my re-election year, you will see the Democratic Party establishment going to war against my campaign and making sure—trying to make sure that I don’t get re-elected. Why? Because at the end of the day, that establishment does not support the agenda of working people. What about climate change, action on climate change, student debt, single-payer healthcare, the gutting of public education, attacks on teachers’ unions? All of this lies at the doorstep of the Democratic Party establishment, and, you know, working people need an alternative.

AMYGOODMAN: Robert Scheer, one of your books, The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street. Talk about the Clinton partnership. When you talk about Clinton Democrats, are you talking about Bill Clinton? Are you talking about Bill and Hillary Clinton? And what that means? The way it’s being discussed today with the rollout of Hillary Clinton is, you know, the role her husband will play. Will he be behind the scenes? Is he a liability? Is he an asset? But isn’t the true nature of their relationship, they are a fierce, formidable political partnership? How do you separate what each of them represents?

ROBERTSCHEER: Well, I don’t think there is any separation. Actually, Bill Clinton might be a bit more progressive. He actually had some positive things to say about whistleblowers in the NSA, whereas Hillary just wanted to—you know, she actually had the nerve to blast Snowden. She said, "What’s he doing in Russia?" as if she didn’t know that they yanked his passport, and he had—that’s where he was in transit. Of all—I mean, this is disgusting, when you think about it. Here we have this brave 29-year-old, at the time, who dared to tell us what this government, that Hillary Clinton was a key part of—this is not ancient history. This is the Obama administration that has jailed and gone after more whistleblowers than all previous American presidents combined. And Hillary Clinton dares attack Edward Snowden for telling us—

AMYGOODMAN: Well, let me—let—

ROBERTSCHEER: —what Hillary Clinton failed to tell us.

AMYGOODMAN: Rather than you characterize what she said, let’s go to Hillary Clinton commenting on Edward Snowden. She was interviewed by The Guardian, which first released the revelations based on the documents of Edward Snowden.

HILLARYCLINTON: Well, I would say, first of all, that Edward Snowden broke our laws, and that cannot be ignored or brushed aside. Secondly, I believe that if his primary concern was stirring a debate in our country over the tension between privacy and security, there were other ways of doing it, instead of stealing an enormous amount of information that had nothing to do with the U.S. or American citizens. I would say, thirdly, that there are many people in our history who have raised serious questions about government behavior. They’ve done it either with or without whistleblower protection, and they have stood and faced whatever the reaction was to make their case in public.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Hillary Clinton commenting on Edward Snowden. Robert Scheer, your response?

ROBERTSCHEER: Yeah, she has no respect for courage in speaking up for human rights. She’s a total hypocrite. My goodness, this guy engaged—he did what Daniel Ellsberg did, and she would have condemned him, as well. I mean, these are people who told us what our government didn’t tell us. She lied to us.

And, you know—but let me just point out, I mean, Joe’s point, somehow she’s OK, or—and I forget your writer from the—by the way, let me just say, I was in Seattle recently, and I’ll say again, if your guest from Seattle were to run for president, I’d vote for her over Hillary any day of the week. And I’d vote for Chafee over Hillary any day of the week, because he’s a true moderate. And I would also give serious consideration to Rand Paul, who took on the banks, who was opposed to invading Iraq, who has actually registered caution.

But we’re not talking ancient history here. Hillary Clinton was in favor of a very belligerent attitude in Syria, which has led to the unleashing of ISIS. She’s the one that said, "Oh, Assad is just the worst thing going," just like they said Saddam Hussein, just like they said Gaddafi. So you look at Libya now, you look at Iraq, you look at Syria, a terrible mess. And yet Hillary Clinton seems to have no compunction that their foundation that her daughter—you know, she says, "I want for every child what my granddaughter has." Well, your granddaughter has a father who works for Goldman Sachs and a daughter who now works for a foundation that gets an enormous amount of money from Saudi Arabia and other people who have actually been the backers of ISIS. What do you stand for? Where are you going to get your $2.5 billion to be president, if not kissing up to Wall Street, which you’ve been doing as senator? I mean, what are we talking about here? This is a person who can talk a good game, but is totally disingenuous and betraying the very people she seems to care about. You know—

AMYGOODMAN: Joe Conason, if you could respond to Robert Scheer?

JOECONASON: Well, I mean, it would be great to bring the whole conversation back to reality, because it seems disconnected. When somebody says, "Well, Seattle is the perfect example of politics in America," no—and "There’s no Republican Party there," well, I’m sorry, there is a Republican Party in America. It is in fact the dominant party right now. So, to claim, well, Seattle—we can all be like Seattle—we’re not all like Seattle. That is not what’s happening in the United States politically.

So you have to start with where you are and the choices you really have, OK? That’s my view. I mean, it’s fine to have these discussions and fantasize about whatever it is you’d like to see happen, and I share a lot of the aspirations that anybody would have about a more progressive government in the United States. But here we are now. And the choice is going to be somebody like Rand Paul—I guess Bob is OK with him wanting to abolish Social Security and Medicare—great—or someone like Hillary Clinton, who won’t do that, you know, for instance. So, going towards November 2016—

AMYGOODMAN: Well, let’s—

JOECONASON: —those are what the choices are.

AMYGOODMAN: I want Robert Scheer to answer—

JOECONASON: Well, wait—well—

AMYGOODMAN: —answer that point, and I’ll come right back to you.

JOECONASON: OK.

ROBERTSCHEER: Oh, come on. I mean, the fact is, Rand Paul—you know, if you want to have me rise to the bait, Rand Paul had the integrity to oppose the bailout that bailed out the banks but did not bail out Americans. Rand Paul had the integrity—

JOECONASON: Saved us from a depression, Bob.

ROBERTSCHEER: —to criticize the Federal Reserve when it was catering to the banks. Rand Paul had the courage—

JOECONASON: And he’s lifted every regulation on banks, Bob. Be honest.

ROBERTSCHEER: —and he’s being attacked by other Republicans—wait a minute—for opposing—

ROBERTSCHEER: Don’t you think Hillary Clinton has all the ingredients of a Margaret Thatcher?

JOECONASON: No, I don’t.

ROBERTSCHEER: Isn’t she? She’s this Cold War—

JOECONASON: And neither does—by the way, by the way, let’s stop for a second.

ROBERTSCHEER: Yeah.

JOECONASON: You want to talk about working people and who they may or may not support. I’ll tell you, she will have the support of every labor union in this country. In fact, she probably already does. Her candidacy yesterday was welcomed by Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, which represents a few more workers than you do, welcoming her into the race and saying, "I’m waiting to see what she says about these issues." He’s not thinking about the Iraq War resolution or any of this other stuff that, admittedly, is relevant, but is not the pressing issue for 2016.

OK, the pressing issue for 2016 is: Do we have a radical-right Republican government that, in all three branches, which will end up with, I don’t know, seven, eight Supreme Court justices, like Alito, or do we have a moderate Democratic administration, where, yes, there’s going to be a lot of tugging and pulling within the party, within Congress, over which issues are to be brought to the fore, what the president’s position will be, what she should do if she’s president? That, to me, is a better situation for working families and all Americans—by the way, people around the world—than the idea of a President Rand Paul or a President Ted Cruz or somebody who is going to dismantle every protection that working families in this country have.

ROBERTSCHEER: Well, what about President Elizabeth Warren? Why are we restrict—

JOECONASON: What about it? She’s not running, Bob.

ROBERTSCHEER: Why are we restricted—but why aren’t you encouraging some more progressive person to run. For God’s sake, Dennis Kucinich, anyone. Why are we stuck—why are we stuck—

JOECONASON: It’s not up to—they’re not going to listen to me as to whether they should run.

ROBERTSCHEER: You’ll have to answer the question, Joe: Why are we stuck with someone like Hillary Clinton, who has a proven record of betraying the progressive ideas?

AMYGOODMAN: Michelle Goldberg, do you want to get a word in here?

ROBERTSCHEER: Why are we stuck with this? Why is this the choice?

AMYGOODMAN: We have to break, and then we’re going to come back to this discussion. You are watching, listening to—and you can read them online at democracynow.org—Robert Scheer, author and editor-in-chief at Truthdig, his latest book, They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy. We’re also joined here in New York by Joe Conason, who is the author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. Michelle Goldberg is with us, senior contributing writer at The Nation. And Kshama Sawant, the Socialist city councilmember from Seattle, who pushed for a $15 minimum wage for all workers in Seattle and won. Stay with us.

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AMYGOODMAN: We are joined by Joe Conason, editor-in-chief of The National Memo; Robert Scheer, among his books, They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy, that’s just out; in Seattle, we’re joined by Kshama Sawant, Socialist city councilmember; and also in New York, Michelle Goldberg, senior contributing writer at The Nation, author of several books, including The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, her latest piece, "Hillary Clinton’s Feminist Family Values." So, this debate about who will represent a progressive America, weigh in, Michelle.

MICHELLEGOLDBERG: Well, we have this debate every four, every eight years. And, you know, Bob Scheer asked, "Why are we stuck with these two choices?" And part of the reason that we’re stuck with these two choices is because of the way left-wing activists approach electoral politics, as opposed to the way right-wing activists approach electoral politics. You know, my first book was about the religious right and their influence in American politics. And they kind of never waited until presidential elections and then wrang their hands and said, you know, "These candidates don’t represent our values, so we’re going to stay home or form a third party or vote for some spoiler candidate." What they did is actually what Kshama Sawant is doing and, you know, kind of left-wing activists who are working at the grassroots are doing all across the country, is that you have to build an infrastructure. You kind of have to build within the party. You have to take over the party apparatus before you can expect the party to serve your ends. You can’t simply kind of come in every eight years and say, "Why can’t they put up someone completely different, you know, or why can’t we have a third party that operates outside of the constraints of the American two-party system?"

AMYGOODMAN: By the way, we haven’t mentioned Bernie Sanders, and there’s a lot of discussion, as he travels the country, about the possibility of a candidacy. Would it be with the Democrats? He caucuses with the Democrats, but he is an independent. In fact, he’s a Socialist from Vermont.

MICHELLEGOLDBERG: Look, Bernie Sanders is probably closest to the candidate whose views align with my own. But I think, like Joe said, you go to an election with the country you have, not the country that you want. The idea that this huge bloc of disengaged voters are secret socialists just waiting to be mobilized is just not borne out by any data out there. If you want a liberal electorate, you have to build it and organize it. You can’t just pretend that it’s in hiding and will appear if only the right candidate—if only kind of the corporate Democrats don’t stop the right candidate from putting their name forward. The votes just aren’t there. The infrastructure just isn’t there. And so, what you do, I think—

AMYGOODMAN: Don’t polls show that the country is more liberal than the leaders? And what about the issue of Republicans appealing to their base—

ROBERTSCHEER: And they’re more anti-Wall Street.

AMYGOODMAN: Their—

ROBERTSCHEER: They’re more anti-Wall Street than Hillary Clinton—

AMYGOODMAN: Robert Scheer.

ROBERTSCHEER: —by a long shot. You know, this is nonsense.

JOECONASON: Some polls show that.

ROBERTSCHEER: Of course they are. They’re very critical of Wall Street.

JOECONASON: Other polls show other things. I mean—

ROBERTSCHEER: Look, you even actually had a chance to stop that bailout, which was an atrocity, and you had plenty of Republicans, and it was the Democrats who betrayed. Let’s be serious here. Are you telling me the vast majority of Americans prefer Wall Street the way Hillary Clinton has catered to them? Or would they actually support a populist? I agree with you, Bernie Sanders would be great right now, you know? But to tell—you know, it’s the Democrats who have destroyed the possibility of grassroots organizing.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, speaking of Socialists, let’s bring—

ROBERTSCHEER: And on a personal note, let me tell you—

MICHELLEGOLDBERG: How have they destroyed the possibility of grassroots organizing?

ROBERTSCHEER: Let me say—I just want to say, on a personal note, I ran for Congress against a so-called establishment Democrat, Jeffrey Cohelan, a long time ago. I got 45 percent of the vote. And as a result of that, Ron Dellums took that seat. Ron Dellums was the best person we had in Congress for a long time, because we showed that people in Oakland and in that community, in Berkeley, could support a progressive candidate.

MICHELLEGOLDBERG: Of course, we can, in Berkeley.

ROBERTSCHEER: You don’t have to—it was Oakland, and it was a good part of Contra Costa. It was what was considered a safe—

JOECONASON: Oh, dear.

ROBERTSCHEER: —moderate Democratic district. And Ron Dellums came in, raising all of the issues that I’ve been raising today, and he raised them in Congress. And you can do it. And I think that’s what’s happening in Seattle, where you have—you know, where you have a choice.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, Kshama Sawant—I want to bring Kshama Sawant in, back into this discussion. The idea of Republicans appealing to their base, but Democrats running away from their base?

KSHAMASAWANT: Well, I think that it can’t just simply—it’s too simplistic to say that Republicans are appealing to their base because their base is right-wing, and then Democrats are not appealing to their base, which is progressive. That completely belies the reality that if you look at poll after poll on social justice issues, on social and economic issues, the vast majority of Americans are well to the left of the choices that are presented to them in the form of Democrats or Republicans. I completely disagree with this idea that somehow the electorate is not progressive and that you have to somehow, you know, generate that and that it can be artificially manufactured. No, as a matter of fact, Americans do want an alternative. They have been crying out for an alternative. There’s a huge vacuum here that is not being filled. And it is really up to the left to do that. It’s not good enough for the left to say that, "Well, you know, we can’t really have a spoiler vote this year, and that’s why we are going to support Hillary." That is an abdication of responsibility. We have to build an alternative. There is no shortcut. Unfortunately, for us, there is no shortcut. It is going to be hard work of building. I agree with Michelle, it is all about organizing. But that organizing from the grassroots, that building of mass movement, which we absolutely have to do, has to incorporate a real political alternative to this dog-and-pony show that we’re going to see in 2016 yet again. And, you know, look at—

AMYGOODMAN: Joe—let me just ask Joe Conason, and when you’re invited in the corporate media, you’ll be having debates with Republicans. You’ll be debating—it’ll be very much that spectrum. This is opening up this discussion. What about the concern of many in the Democratic establishment that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a viable opponent in the primaries, engineered by the Clintons or not, that that could actually weaken her?

JOECONASON: You know, some people think that. Some people think the opposite and say, well, you know, Bill Bradley didn’t really strengthen Al Gore in 2000, and there’s really not an example that you can give of a candidate for president who was made stronger by a primary opponent. So, it could be—I don’t know, actually. I think she certainly—

AMYGOODMAN: President Obama?

JOECONASON: Well, was he made stronger? That’s a good question. He was made stronger certainly when the Clintons decided to support him for election in 2008 and 2012, and probably helped to keep him—get him in office and keep him in office. But, look, I mean, Bob Scheer ran for Congress 50 years ago, just so we put this in perspective. Fifty years later—and it was a noble cause that he was supporting, antiwar cause. I admired him very much when I was growing up. And 50 years later, we are in the same position that we were then. There is no burgeoning left alternative to the left of the Democratic Party in this country.

AMYGOODMAN: Ten seconds for this, other three guests. Michelle Goldberg, right now, as we wrap up, your comment on what you want to see happen in this next year?

MICHELLEGOLDBERG: What I want to see happen is for people to organize within the Democratic Party to pull Hillary Clinton to the left, because I think that, for better or for worse, she is responsive to political pressure.

AMYGOODMAN: Robert Scheer, eight seconds?

ROBERTSCHEER: Yeah, I supported Obama, and it was easier to challenge the government when Bush was president than when Obama was president. So it is not good for democracy to have a lesser evil as our candidate.

AMYGOODMAN: Kshama Sawant?

KSHAMASAWANT: I would like to see Bernie Sanders run as an independent political, anticorporate alternative to Democrats and Republicans. And I would like the support of the left for me to win my re-election, because that is absolutely critical for the left. And so—

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, Kshama Sawant, Socialist Alternative city councilmember in Seattle; Joe Conason, editor-in-chief of The National Memo. Thank you so much to Nation writer Michelle Goldberg and to Robert Scheer, who’s author of They Know Everything About You.

]]>
Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400Are Obama's Record Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Iraq Fueling Unrest in Middle East?http://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/7/are_obamas_record_arms_sales_to
tag:democracynow.org,2015-04-07:en/story/f68c61 AARON MATÉ: We turn now to the major increase in U.S. arms exports under President Obama. As Saudi Arabia continues U.S.-backed strikes in Yemen and Washington lifts its freeze on military aid to Egypt, new figures show the majority of U.S. weapons exports under Obama have gone to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia tops the list at $46 billion in new agreements. William Hartung writes that even after adjusting for inflation, quote, &quot;The volume of major deals concluded by the Obama administration in its first five years exceeds the amount approved by the Bush administration in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion.&quot; That also means the Obama administration has approved more arms sales than any other U.S. administration since World War II.
AMY GOODMAN : To talk more about these figures, we&#8217;re joined now by Bill Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. His latest book is Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex . He recently wrote an article headlined &quot;The Obama Arms Bazaar: Record Sales, Troubling Results.&quot;
Welcome back to Democracy Now! , Bill.
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Thanks for having me.
AMY GOODMAN : Talk about the numbers. Talk about the weapons. Where are they going?
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Well, I was astonished, in researching the article, that Obama had sold this much. I mean, I knew there were record deals with the Saudis, but to outsell the eight years of Bush, to sell more than any president since World War II, was surprising even to me, who follow these things quite closely. The majority, 60 percent, have gone to the Persian Gulf and Middle East, and within that, the Saudis have been the largest recipient of things like U.S. fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, bombs, guns, almost an entire arsenal they&#8217;ve purchased just in the last few years.
AARON MATÉ: What do you think the Iran nuclear deal, if anything, portends for U.S. sales to the Middle East? President Obama is about to call a meeting at Camp David with the leaders of all the Gulf nations. Do you see them exploiting that to call for increased military purchases from the U.S.?
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Unfortunately, yes. I mean, you would think a reduction of tensions should reduce the arms sales, but the Saudis have been screaming about the deal, saying, &quot;Well, you&#8217;re letting Iran off the hook,&quot; which is not the case, &quot;and therefore you have to bulk up our armaments,&quot; which is kind of insane, given the amounts that have already gone there.
AMY GOODMAN : So how does the Obama administration spending on military weapons—and is it the Obama administration spending money on military weapons or just allowing the weapons to be sold to these countries? And how does it compare to the two terms of the George W. Bush administration?
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Well, primarily, these are sales, because the Saudis and others in the Gulf can afford them, the exceptions being aid to Egypt and Israel, which are the biggest recipients of U.S. military aid. Under Bush, they sold about $30 billion less than the $169 billion of the first five years of Obama. So already in five years, he&#8217;s outsold what Bush did in eight years.
AMY GOODMAN : And what does this mean for war in the world?
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Well, I think we&#8217;re seeing the results now. As they mentioned in the prior segment, Saudi Arabia is using U.S. weapons to bomb Yemen. Civilians have been killed. Egypt is not exactly a democratic regime, as we know. Now they&#8217;ve opened sales again to them. They&#8217;ve supported dictators for many years, prior to Obama, which helped, in one hand, spark the Arab Spring, but also has armed the counterattacks by places like Egypt and the Saudis, the Saudis going in to crush democracy movement in Bahrain, along with the government there. So it&#8217;s been a force—a negative force for many years. I think it&#8217;s spinning out of control now.
AARON MATÉ: And your piece also points out that it&#8217;s not just U.S. arms going to regimes. When countries go haywire and into chaos, like in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, U.S. weapons end up in the hands of militants.
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Exactly. We don&#8217;t know the full numbers, but in Iraq the security forces abandoned large amounts of the weaponry to ISIS . U.S.-armed rebels in Syria, armed by the CIA , went over to join ISIS . There&#8217;s $500 million missing of weapons in Yemen. Some think it&#8217;s gone to the Houthis. Some think it&#8217;s gone to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Of course, there&#8217;s arms on both sides, because the government and the forces have split in this war. So it&#8217;s quite possible every side of that war in Yemen may have some level of U.S. weaponry. So it&#8217;s really gone, you know, haywire. It&#8217;s sort of what I call the boomerang effect, when U.S. arms end up in the hands of U.S. adversaries.
AMY GOODMAN : I&#8217;d like to ask about a recent exchange between Deutsche Bank analyst Myles Walton and Lockheed Martin chief executive Marillyn Hewson during an earnings call in January. Financial industry analysts use earnings calls as an opportunity to ask publicly traded corporations like Lockheed about issues that might harm profitability. Hewson said that Lockheed was hoping to increase sales and that both the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region were, quote, &quot;growth markets.&quot;
MARILLYN HEWSON : Even if there may be some kind of deal done with Iran, there is volatility all around the region, and each one of these countries believes they&#8217;ve got to protect their citizens, and the things that we can bring to them help in that regard. So, similarly, you know, that&#8217;s the Middle East, and I know that&#8217;s what you asked about, but you could take that same argument to the Asia-Pacific region, which is another growth area for us—a lot of volatility, a lot of instability, a lot of things that are happening both with North Korea as well as some of the tensions between China and Japan. And so, in both of those regions, which are growth areas for us, we expect that there&#8217;s going to continue to be opportunities for us to bring our capabilities to them.
AMY GOODMAN : During the phone call, Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson, who you were just listening to, also noted 20 percent of Lockheed&#8217;s sales in 2014 were international—that is, to non-American customers. She added, Lockheed has set a goal to get to 25 percent over the next few years. Can you talk about the significance of this, Bill Hartung?
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Well, there&#8217;s been a slight blip in Pentagon procurement. It&#8217;s still quite high, but the companies need to grow constantly. And so they&#8217;re looking to up foreign sales to make up for any reductions at the Pentagon. And as we heard in the clip, they&#8217;re looking to areas of conflict. And it&#8217;s not surprising, but I&#8217;m surprised that she said it so explicitly. You know, she was asked about the Iran question: Would that depress the market? She basically said, &quot;Oh, there&#8217;s plenty of turbulence there, don&#8217;t worry about it, as there is in East Asia, and these will be our growth markets.&quot; So she&#8217;s more or less acknowledging they thrive on war and the threat of war, which is not surprising to a lot of people, but nonetheless, to say it like that, I think, is a bit shocking, to just put it right out there.
AARON MATÉ: I want to ask you about drones. Earlier this year, the White House announced it will allow foreign allies to purchase U.S.-made armed drones for the first time. Under a new policy, American firms can sell their drones abroad but will be subjected to a case-by-case review. Talk about this policy. You were very critical of it.
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Yes. I mean, it&#8217;s got some rhetoric that makes sense: You can&#8217;t use these drones to repress your own population, for illegal surveillance, to attack your neighbors. But as we&#8217;ve seen in other cases, once they&#8217;re sold, very little control over how they&#8217;re used. And given the regimes in the Persian Gulf, they&#8217;ve already sold unarmed Predators, or about to, the UAE . So it&#8217;s quite possible we&#8217;ll see, in the context of the war on Yemen, perhaps armed drones sold to some of these countries. And, you know, it&#8217;s fine to say we&#8217;re going to control their use, but the record in Iraq and Yemen and elsewhere makes that quite dubious.
AMY GOODMAN : As we see the Obama administration&#8217;s dramatic acceleration of U.S. weapons sales abroad, can you talk about the U.S. requirements on the licensing of weapons and weapons-related exports?
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Well, the industry has wanted a relaxation for years, and the Obama administration finally delivered that. So, they took things from the State Department, which does a somewhat better job of vetting human rights and so forth, and took thousands of items and put them in the Commerce Department, which historically has been involved in promoting arms sales, not in vetting them. So, it&#8217;s going to be easier for some countries to get arms without a license, and those countries will become hubs of smuggling, no doubt. So it&#8217;s going to be counter to the—even the narrow security interests of the United States, but it&#8217;s something industry has wanted for quite a while.
AARON MATÉ: On the positive side, the world&#8217;s first treaty regulating the arms trade took effect last year, the Arms Trade Treaty. The U.S. has signed it. Senate hasn&#8217;t ratified it. But you write that that&#8217;s still a positive thing.
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Yes, I think, compared to Bush, which was joined at the hip with the NRA and wouldn&#8217;t go near the Arms Trade Treaty, at least the U.S. administration signed it, although a somewhat weaker version than some of us would have liked. It commits them on paper not to sell to human rights abusers, not to let arms that may be involved in corruption. Obviously, that&#8217;s been violated, in my opinion, in some of the current sales to the Middle East, but it&#8217;s a standard that they should be held to, because they did sign that treaty.
AMY GOODMAN : So, they sign the treaty, and they accelerate weapons sales abroad. Would you say the—financing the weapons industry is actually a motivation for being involved in wars abroad?
WILLIAM HARTUNG : I think it&#8217;s one element. I think there&#8217;s an ideological element. I think there&#8217;s an element of just U.S. global reach and global control. But certainly, a reinforcing point is to sell arms and to help these companies. And it sometimes is made quite explicit. When they sell to the Saudis, for example, the Pentagon points out it will create x number of jobs in the United States. So they&#8217;re not shy about talking about the jobs aspect.
AMY GOODMAN : So, weapons industry does better under the Democrats than the Republicans?
WILLIAM HARTUNG : I would say, at the moment, they&#8217;re doing better on the arms sales front. Slightly—
AMY GOODMAN : And where do their contributions go?
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Well, they tip usually depending who&#8217;s in power. So they&#8217;re about two-thirds Republican in the Senate and the House, which are controlled by Republicans. They&#8217;re quite supportive of Obama. There&#8217;s such a flood of money from everywhere, sometimes it&#8217;s hard to follow one stream within that huge flow of money.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we want to thank you, Bill Hartung, for being with us. Final question: What are you recommending?
WILLIAM HARTUNG : Well, I think the Obama administration should live up to its principles on the Arms Trade Treaty. I think Congress should take a closer look at some of these sales, speak out against them. I think civil society groups which oppose this should make their voices louder, because in many cases most Americans don&#8217;t even know this is happening.
AMY GOODMAN : Bill Hartung is director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. His latest book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex . We&#8217;ll link to his piece , &quot;The Obama Arms Bazaar: Record Sales, Troubling Results.&quot;
When we come back, we look at the drought in California. What does it have to do with animal agriculture? What does it have to do with eating meat? Stay with us. AARON MATÉ: We turn now to the major increase in U.S. arms exports under President Obama. As Saudi Arabia continues U.S.-backed strikes in Yemen and Washington lifts its freeze on military aid to Egypt, new figures show the majority of U.S. weapons exports under Obama have gone to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia tops the list at $46 billion in new agreements. William Hartung writes that even after adjusting for inflation, quote, "The volume of major deals concluded by the Obama administration in its first five years exceeds the amount approved by the Bush administration in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion." That also means the Obama administration has approved more arms sales than any other U.S. administration since World War II.

AMYGOODMAN: To talk more about these figures, we’re joined now by Bill Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. His latest book is Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex. He recently wrote an article headlined "The Obama Arms Bazaar: Record Sales, Troubling Results."

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Bill.

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Thanks for having me.

AMYGOODMAN: Talk about the numbers. Talk about the weapons. Where are they going?

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, I was astonished, in researching the article, that Obama had sold this much. I mean, I knew there were record deals with the Saudis, but to outsell the eight years of Bush, to sell more than any president since World War II, was surprising even to me, who follow these things quite closely. The majority, 60 percent, have gone to the Persian Gulf and Middle East, and within that, the Saudis have been the largest recipient of things like U.S. fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, bombs, guns, almost an entire arsenal they’ve purchased just in the last few years.

AARON MATÉ: What do you think the Iran nuclear deal, if anything, portends for U.S. sales to the Middle East? President Obama is about to call a meeting at Camp David with the leaders of all the Gulf nations. Do you see them exploiting that to call for increased military purchases from the U.S.?

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Unfortunately, yes. I mean, you would think a reduction of tensions should reduce the arms sales, but the Saudis have been screaming about the deal, saying, "Well, you’re letting Iran off the hook," which is not the case, "and therefore you have to bulk up our armaments," which is kind of insane, given the amounts that have already gone there.

AMYGOODMAN: So how does the Obama administration spending on military weapons—and is it the Obama administration spending money on military weapons or just allowing the weapons to be sold to these countries? And how does it compare to the two terms of the George W. Bush administration?

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, primarily, these are sales, because the Saudis and others in the Gulf can afford them, the exceptions being aid to Egypt and Israel, which are the biggest recipients of U.S. military aid. Under Bush, they sold about $30 billion less than the $169 billion of the first five years of Obama. So already in five years, he’s outsold what Bush did in eight years.

AMYGOODMAN: And what does this mean for war in the world?

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, I think we’re seeing the results now. As they mentioned in the prior segment, Saudi Arabia is using U.S. weapons to bomb Yemen. Civilians have been killed. Egypt is not exactly a democratic regime, as we know. Now they’ve opened sales again to them. They’ve supported dictators for many years, prior to Obama, which helped, in one hand, spark the Arab Spring, but also has armed the counterattacks by places like Egypt and the Saudis, the Saudis going in to crush democracy movement in Bahrain, along with the government there. So it’s been a force—a negative force for many years. I think it’s spinning out of control now.

AARON MATÉ: And your piece also points out that it’s not just U.S. arms going to regimes. When countries go haywire and into chaos, like in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, U.S. weapons end up in the hands of militants.

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Exactly. We don’t know the full numbers, but in Iraq the security forces abandoned large amounts of the weaponry to ISIS. U.S.-armed rebels in Syria, armed by the CIA, went over to join ISIS. There’s $500 million missing of weapons in Yemen. Some think it’s gone to the Houthis. Some think it’s gone to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Of course, there’s arms on both sides, because the government and the forces have split in this war. So it’s quite possible every side of that war in Yemen may have some level of U.S. weaponry. So it’s really gone, you know, haywire. It’s sort of what I call the boomerang effect, when U.S. arms end up in the hands of U.S. adversaries.

AMYGOODMAN: I’d like to ask about a recent exchange between Deutsche Bank analyst Myles Walton and Lockheed Martin chief executive Marillyn Hewson during an earnings call in January. Financial industry analysts use earnings calls as an opportunity to ask publicly traded corporations like Lockheed about issues that might harm profitability. Hewson said that Lockheed was hoping to increase sales and that both the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region were, quote, "growth markets."

MARILLYNHEWSON: Even if there may be some kind of deal done with Iran, there is volatility all around the region, and each one of these countries believes they’ve got to protect their citizens, and the things that we can bring to them help in that regard. So, similarly, you know, that’s the Middle East, and I know that’s what you asked about, but you could take that same argument to the Asia-Pacific region, which is another growth area for us—a lot of volatility, a lot of instability, a lot of things that are happening both with North Korea as well as some of the tensions between China and Japan. And so, in both of those regions, which are growth areas for us, we expect that there’s going to continue to be opportunities for us to bring our capabilities to them.

AMYGOODMAN: During the phone call, Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson, who you were just listening to, also noted 20 percent of Lockheed’s sales in 2014 were international—that is, to non-American customers. She added, Lockheed has set a goal to get to 25 percent over the next few years. Can you talk about the significance of this, Bill Hartung?

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, there’s been a slight blip in Pentagon procurement. It’s still quite high, but the companies need to grow constantly. And so they’re looking to up foreign sales to make up for any reductions at the Pentagon. And as we heard in the clip, they’re looking to areas of conflict. And it’s not surprising, but I’m surprised that she said it so explicitly. You know, she was asked about the Iran question: Would that depress the market? She basically said, "Oh, there’s plenty of turbulence there, don’t worry about it, as there is in East Asia, and these will be our growth markets." So she’s more or less acknowledging they thrive on war and the threat of war, which is not surprising to a lot of people, but nonetheless, to say it like that, I think, is a bit shocking, to just put it right out there.

AARON MATÉ: I want to ask you about drones. Earlier this year, the White House announced it will allow foreign allies to purchase U.S.-made armed drones for the first time. Under a new policy, American firms can sell their drones abroad but will be subjected to a case-by-case review. Talk about this policy. You were very critical of it.

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Yes. I mean, it’s got some rhetoric that makes sense: You can’t use these drones to repress your own population, for illegal surveillance, to attack your neighbors. But as we’ve seen in other cases, once they’re sold, very little control over how they’re used. And given the regimes in the Persian Gulf, they’ve already sold unarmed Predators, or about to, the UAE. So it’s quite possible we’ll see, in the context of the war on Yemen, perhaps armed drones sold to some of these countries. And, you know, it’s fine to say we’re going to control their use, but the record in Iraq and Yemen and elsewhere makes that quite dubious.

AMYGOODMAN: As we see the Obama administration’s dramatic acceleration of U.S. weapons sales abroad, can you talk about the U.S. requirements on the licensing of weapons and weapons-related exports?

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, the industry has wanted a relaxation for years, and the Obama administration finally delivered that. So, they took things from the State Department, which does a somewhat better job of vetting human rights and so forth, and took thousands of items and put them in the Commerce Department, which historically has been involved in promoting arms sales, not in vetting them. So, it’s going to be easier for some countries to get arms without a license, and those countries will become hubs of smuggling, no doubt. So it’s going to be counter to the—even the narrow security interests of the United States, but it’s something industry has wanted for quite a while.

AARON MATÉ: On the positive side, the world’s first treaty regulating the arms trade took effect last year, the Arms Trade Treaty. The U.S. has signed it. Senate hasn’t ratified it. But you write that that’s still a positive thing.

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Yes, I think, compared to Bush, which was joined at the hip with the NRA and wouldn’t go near the Arms Trade Treaty, at least the U.S. administration signed it, although a somewhat weaker version than some of us would have liked. It commits them on paper not to sell to human rights abusers, not to let arms that may be involved in corruption. Obviously, that’s been violated, in my opinion, in some of the current sales to the Middle East, but it’s a standard that they should be held to, because they did sign that treaty.

AMYGOODMAN: So, they sign the treaty, and they accelerate weapons sales abroad. Would you say the—financing the weapons industry is actually a motivation for being involved in wars abroad?

WILLIAMHARTUNG: I think it’s one element. I think there’s an ideological element. I think there’s an element of just U.S. global reach and global control. But certainly, a reinforcing point is to sell arms and to help these companies. And it sometimes is made quite explicit. When they sell to the Saudis, for example, the Pentagon points out it will create x number of jobs in the United States. So they’re not shy about talking about the jobs aspect.

AMYGOODMAN: So, weapons industry does better under the Democrats than the Republicans?

WILLIAMHARTUNG: I would say, at the moment, they’re doing better on the arms sales front. Slightly—

AMYGOODMAN: And where do their contributions go?

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, they tip usually depending who’s in power. So they’re about two-thirds Republican in the Senate and the House, which are controlled by Republicans. They’re quite supportive of Obama. There’s such a flood of money from everywhere, sometimes it’s hard to follow one stream within that huge flow of money.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you, Bill Hartung, for being with us. Final question: What are you recommending?

WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, I think the Obama administration should live up to its principles on the Arms Trade Treaty. I think Congress should take a closer look at some of these sales, speak out against them. I think civil society groups which oppose this should make their voices louder, because in many cases most Americans don’t even know this is happening.

AMYGOODMAN: Bill Hartung is director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. His latest book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex. We’ll link to his piece, "The Obama Arms Bazaar: Record Sales, Troubling Results."

When we come back, we look at the drought in California. What does it have to do with animal agriculture? What does it have to do with eating meat? Stay with us.

]]>
Tue, 07 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400Amy Goodman Questions Ex-CIA Director Porter Goss about Torture at George W. Bush Conferencehttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/3/27/amy_goodman_questions_ex_cia_director
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-27:blog/46b97e When questioned by Democracy Now! host and executive producer Amy Goodman, former CIA Director Peter Goss said the bipartisan Senate Committee Report on the CIA&#8217;s Use of Torture was &quot;not the full truth&quot; and criticized Sen. John McCain for defending it.
Both Goodman and Goss spoke Tuesday during a conference at Hofstra University that assessed the George W. Bush presidency.
As Newsday reports:
Goss criticized the committee&#8217;s report as a &quot;partisan political study&quot; because it was called for by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who serves as vice chairwoman of the committee.
Goodman countered that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), once a prisoner of war in Vietnam, had defended the report, saying the use of torture &quot;damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.&quot;
Watch the exchange in the video above.
Former national intelligence director and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, also spoke at the event, and later said, &quot;Boy, I need a stiff drink after that one.&quot; See more here .
Watch Amy Goodman&#8217;s full remarks at the conference here .
See all of Democracy Now!&#8217;s reports on CIA torture .
PORTER GOSS : In the interests of fairness, would respond a little bit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study on rendition, detention and interrogation—was a partisan political study. It was not two-sided. And there are further facts that need to come out from those who are able to, I think, correct some of the misstatements in the Senate study. That has not happened yet. I hope it will happen, because I do believe the American public needs to know the truth of all of this. The Senate study is not the full truth.
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
MODERATOR : Could you say again?
PORTER GOSS : What?
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
PORTER GOSS : Of course there was some truth in it. It was a cherry-picked, selective presentation of information to support a narrative that was made before this report actually even was started. The announced purpose of the report, of the study, if I&#8217;m correcting Chairman Feinstein—if I&#8217;m quoting Chairman Feinstein properly, was to make sure this never happens again. I&#8217;m not sure what the &quot;this&quot; was, or neither are a lot of people. But apparently, as you go through the report, as you go through this study, there are a series of observations that involved information that the decision makers could have provided to the people doing the report and would have given a fairer and more complete understanding of what happened and why. If you want to know why something happened, it&#8217;s a good idea to go back to the people who made the decision and ask them. They calculatedly and determinedly avoided going back to anybody that they thought might spoil their narrative. So, consequently, yes, there is some information that is cherry-picked, some out of context and some actually factually correct, as far as I know. I have not read a word of the report. I have not read a word of any of this stuff, because, to me, it is purely partisan political. And a politicization of intelligence in this country is going to hurt only one person, and that&#8217;s every citizen in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN : I just wanted to quote Senator McCain, who—
PORTER GOSS : I love Senator McCain, and I would certainly agree with you that Senator McCain is the icon of prisoner of war conduct. He has suffered greatly for our country and made great sacrifices and deserves to be listened to. But he does not have all of the information either.
AMY GOODMAN : He said, &quot;It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose—to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies—but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.&quot;
PORTER GOSS : He is welcome to his opinion. I doubt he&#8217;s read the report. And in any event, he has certainly not asked the people who were involved in this activity what they think, because they have all indicated that he has not asked them. So, even he is dealing with less than a full deck.
When questioned by Democracy Now! host and executive producer Amy Goodman, former CIA Director Peter Goss said the bipartisan Senate Committee Report on the CIA’s Use of Torture was "not the full truth" and criticized Sen. John McCain for defending it.

Both Goodman and Goss spoke Tuesday during a conference at Hofstra University that assessed the George W. Bush presidency.

Goss criticized the committee’s report as a "partisan political study" because it was called for by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who serves as vice chairwoman of the committee.

Goodman countered that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), once a prisoner of war in Vietnam, had defended the report, saying the use of torture "damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world."

Watch the exchange in the video above.

Former national intelligence director and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, also spoke at the event, and later said, "Boy, I need a stiff drink after that one." See more here.

PORTERGOSS: In the interests of fairness, would respond a little bit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study on rendition, detention and interrogation—was a partisan political study. It was not two-sided. And there are further facts that need to come out from those who are able to, I think, correct some of the misstatements in the Senate study. That has not happened yet. I hope it will happen, because I do believe the American public needs to know the truth of all of this. The Senate study is not the full truth.

AMYGOODMAN: Was there any truth in it?

MODERATOR: Could you say again?

PORTERGOSS: What?

AMYGOODMAN: Was there any truth in it?

PORTERGOSS: Of course there was some truth in it. It was a cherry-picked, selective presentation of information to support a narrative that was made before this report actually even was started. The announced purpose of the report, of the study, if I’m correcting Chairman Feinstein—if I’m quoting Chairman Feinstein properly, was to make sure this never happens again. I’m not sure what the "this" was, or neither are a lot of people. But apparently, as you go through the report, as you go through this study, there are a series of observations that involved information that the decision makers could have provided to the people doing the report and would have given a fairer and more complete understanding of what happened and why. If you want to know why something happened, it’s a good idea to go back to the people who made the decision and ask them. They calculatedly and determinedly avoided going back to anybody that they thought might spoil their narrative. So, consequently, yes, there is some information that is cherry-picked, some out of context and some actually factually correct, as far as I know. I have not read a word of the report. I have not read a word of any of this stuff, because, to me, it is purely partisan political. And a politicization of intelligence in this country is going to hurt only one person, and that’s every citizen in the United States.

AMYGOODMAN: I just wanted to quote Senator McCain, who—

PORTERGOSS: I love Senator McCain, and I would certainly agree with you that Senator McCain is the icon of prisoner of war conduct. He has suffered greatly for our country and made great sacrifices and deserves to be listened to. But he does not have all of the information either.

AMYGOODMAN: He said, "It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose—to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies—but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world."

PORTERGOSS: He is welcome to his opinion. I doubt he’s read the report. And in any event, he has certainly not asked the people who were involved in this activity what they think, because they have all indicated that he has not asked them. So, even he is dealing with less than a full deck.

]]>
Fri, 27 Mar 2015 15:25:00 -0400Amy Goodman Questions Ex-CIA Director Porter Goss about Torture at George W. Bush Conference When questioned by Democracy Now! host and executive producer Amy Goodman, former CIA Director Peter Goss said the bipartisan Senate Committee Report on the CIA&#8217;s Use of Torture was &quot;not the full truth&quot; and criticized Sen. John McCain for defending it.
Both Goodman and Goss spoke Tuesday during a conference at Hofstra University that assessed the George W. Bush presidency.
As Newsday reports:
Goss criticized the committee&#8217;s report as a &quot;partisan political study&quot; because it was called for by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who serves as vice chairwoman of the committee.
Goodman countered that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), once a prisoner of war in Vietnam, had defended the report, saying the use of torture &quot;damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.&quot;
Watch the exchange in the video above.
Former national intelligence director and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, also spoke at the event, and later said, &quot;Boy, I need a stiff drink after that one.&quot; See more here .
Watch Amy Goodman&#8217;s full remarks at the conference here .
See all of Democracy Now!&#8217;s reports on CIA torture .
PORTER GOSS : In the interests of fairness, would respond a little bit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study on rendition, detention and interrogation—was a partisan political study. It was not two-sided. And there are further facts that need to come out from those who are able to, I think, correct some of the misstatements in the Senate study. That has not happened yet. I hope it will happen, because I do believe the American public needs to know the truth of all of this. The Senate study is not the full truth.
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
MODERATOR : Could you say again?
PORTER GOSS : What?
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
PORTER GOSS : Of course there was some truth in it. It was a cherry-picked, selective presentation of information to support a narrative that was made before this report actually even was started. The announced purpose of the report, of the study, if I&#8217;m correcting Chairman Feinstein—if I&#8217;m quoting Chairman Feinstein properly, was to make sure this never happens again. I&#8217;m not sure what the &quot;this&quot; was, or neither are a lot of people. But apparently, as you go through the report, as you go through this study, there are a series of observations that involved information that the decision makers could have provided to the people doing the report and would have given a fairer and more complete understanding of what happened and why. If you want to know why something happened, it&#8217;s a good idea to go back to the people who made the decision and ask them. They calculatedly and determinedly avoided going back to anybody that they thought might spoil their narrative. So, consequently, yes, there is some information that is cherry-picked, some out of context and some actually factually correct, as far as I know. I have not read a word of the report. I have not read a word of any of this stuff, because, to me, it is purely partisan political. And a politicization of intelligence in this country is going to hurt only one person, and that&#8217;s every citizen in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN : I just wanted to quote Senator McCain, who—
PORTER GOSS : I love Senator McCain, and I would certainly agree with you that Senator McCain is the icon of prisoner of war conduct. He has suffered greatly for our country and made great sacrifices and deserves to be listened to. But he does not have all of the information either.
AMY GOODMAN : He said, &quot;It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose—to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies—but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.&quot;
PORTER GOSS : He is welcome to his opinion. I doubt he&#8217;s read the report. And in any event, he has certainly not asked the people who were involved in this activity what they think, because they have all indicated that he has not asked them. So, even he is dealing with less than a full deck. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsAmy Goodman Questions Ex-CIA Director Porter Goss about Torture at George W. Bush Conference When questioned by Democracy Now! host and executive producer Amy Goodman, former CIA Director Peter Goss said the bipartisan Senate Committee Report on the CIA&#8217;s Use of Torture was &quot;not the full truth&quot; and criticized Sen. John McCain for defending it.
Both Goodman and Goss spoke Tuesday during a conference at Hofstra University that assessed the George W. Bush presidency.
As Newsday reports:
Goss criticized the committee&#8217;s report as a &quot;partisan political study&quot; because it was called for by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who serves as vice chairwoman of the committee.
Goodman countered that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), once a prisoner of war in Vietnam, had defended the report, saying the use of torture &quot;damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.&quot;
Watch the exchange in the video above.
Former national intelligence director and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, also spoke at the event, and later said, &quot;Boy, I need a stiff drink after that one.&quot; See more here .
Watch Amy Goodman&#8217;s full remarks at the conference here .
See all of Democracy Now!&#8217;s reports on CIA torture .
PORTER GOSS : In the interests of fairness, would respond a little bit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study on rendition, detention and interrogation—was a partisan political study. It was not two-sided. And there are further facts that need to come out from those who are able to, I think, correct some of the misstatements in the Senate study. That has not happened yet. I hope it will happen, because I do believe the American public needs to know the truth of all of this. The Senate study is not the full truth.
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
MODERATOR : Could you say again?
PORTER GOSS : What?
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
PORTER GOSS : Of course there was some truth in it. It was a cherry-picked, selective presentation of information to support a narrative that was made before this report actually even was started. The announced purpose of the report, of the study, if I&#8217;m correcting Chairman Feinstein—if I&#8217;m quoting Chairman Feinstein properly, was to make sure this never happens again. I&#8217;m not sure what the &quot;this&quot; was, or neither are a lot of people. But apparently, as you go through the report, as you go through this study, there are a series of observations that involved information that the decision makers could have provided to the people doing the report and would have given a fairer and more complete understanding of what happened and why. If you want to know why something happened, it&#8217;s a good idea to go back to the people who made the decision and ask them. They calculatedly and determinedly avoided going back to anybody that they thought might spoil their narrative. So, consequently, yes, there is some information that is cherry-picked, some out of context and some actually factually correct, as far as I know. I have not read a word of the report. I have not read a word of any of this stuff, because, to me, it is purely partisan political. And a politicization of intelligence in this country is going to hurt only one person, and that&#8217;s every citizen in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN : I just wanted to quote Senator McCain, who—
PORTER GOSS : I love Senator McCain, and I would certainly agree with you that Senator McCain is the icon of prisoner of war conduct. He has suffered greatly for our country and made great sacrifices and deserves to be listened to. But he does not have all of the information either.
AMY GOODMAN : He said, &quot;It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose—to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies—but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.&quot;
PORTER GOSS : He is welcome to his opinion. I doubt he&#8217;s read the report. And in any event, he has certainly not asked the people who were involved in this activity what they think, because they have all indicated that he has not asked them. So, even he is dealing with less than a full deck. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!News"I Need a Stiff Drink After That": John Negroponte on Being Questioned by Amy Goodman over Iraq Warhttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/3/27/i_need_a_stiff_drink_after
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-27:blog/074fe6 During a conference Tuesday at Hofstra University that assessed the George W. Bush presidency, Amy Goodman asked panelists if senior administration officials should be tried for war crimes. Her question to former national intelligence director and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, drew this response:
Amy Goodman: &quot;Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?&quot;
John Negroponte: &quot;Look, well, torture is never right. And ...&quot;
Amy Goodman: &quot;Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?&quot;
John Negroponte: &quot;I say torture is never right. That&#8217;s my first point. But my second point was, I&#8217;ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution.&quot;
According to The Wall Street Journal , Negroponte continued to think about Goodman&#8217;s comments after the panel discussion was over. The article about the event ended with this remark:
&quot;Boy, I need a stiff drink after that one,&quot; Mr. Negroponte told a small group of people after the panel on which he and Ms. Goodman served. &quot;Double martini.&quot;
Click here to watch Amy Goodman&#8217;s full address at the conference, along with a response from another panelist, former CIA Director Porter Goss.
AMY GOODMAN : Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, &quot;If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently,&quot; which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.
PORTER GOSS : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : Look, well, torture is never right. And—
AMY GOODMAN : Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : I say torture is never right. That&#8217;s my first point.
But my second point was, I&#8217;ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn&#8217;t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He&#8217;s the commander-in-chief. He&#8217;s got the constitutional authority, and that&#8217;s what he decided to do.
The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, &quot;It&#8217;s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?&quot; And Blix said, &quot;You know, it&#8217;s—that&#8217;s right.&quot; But he said, &quot;I can&#8217;t—I still don&#8217;t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty.&quot; And maybe that&#8217;s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged.
During a conference Tuesday at Hofstra University that assessed the George W. Bush presidency, Amy Goodman asked panelists if senior administration officials should be tried for war crimes. Her question to former national intelligence director and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, drew this response:

Amy Goodman: "Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?"

John Negroponte: "Look, well, torture is never right. And ..."

Amy Goodman: "Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?"

John Negroponte: "I say torture is never right. That’s my first point. But my second point was, I’ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution."

According to The Wall Street Journal, Negroponte continued to think about Goodman’s comments after the panel discussion was over. The article about the event ended with this remark:

"Boy, I need a stiff drink after that one," Mr. Negroponte told a small group of people after the panel on which he and Ms. Goodman served. "Double martini."

Click here to watch Amy Goodman’s full address at the conference, along with a response from another panelist, former CIA Director Porter Goss.

AMYGOODMAN: Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, "If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently," which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.

PORTERGOSS: Thank you.

AMYGOODMAN: Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?

JOHNNEGROPONTE: Look, well, torture is never right. And—

AMYGOODMAN: Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?

JOHNNEGROPONTE: I say torture is never right. That’s my first point.

But my second point was, I’ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn’t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He’s the commander-in-chief. He’s got the constitutional authority, and that’s what he decided to do.

The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, "It’s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?" And Blix said, "You know, it’s—that’s right." But he said, "I can’t—I still don’t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty." And maybe that’s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged.

]]>
Fri, 27 Mar 2015 14:39:00 -0400"I Need a Stiff Drink After That": John Negroponte on Being Questioned by Amy Goodman over Iraq War During a conference Tuesday at Hofstra University that assessed the George W. Bush presidency, Amy Goodman asked panelists if senior administration officials should be tried for war crimes. Her question to former national intelligence director and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, drew this response:
Amy Goodman: &quot;Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?&quot;
John Negroponte: &quot;Look, well, torture is never right. And ...&quot;
Amy Goodman: &quot;Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?&quot;
John Negroponte: &quot;I say torture is never right. That&#8217;s my first point. But my second point was, I&#8217;ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution.&quot;
According to The Wall Street Journal , Negroponte continued to think about Goodman&#8217;s comments after the panel discussion was over. The article about the event ended with this remark:
&quot;Boy, I need a stiff drink after that one,&quot; Mr. Negroponte told a small group of people after the panel on which he and Ms. Goodman served. &quot;Double martini.&quot;
Click here to watch Amy Goodman&#8217;s full address at the conference, along with a response from another panelist, former CIA Director Porter Goss.
AMY GOODMAN : Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, &quot;If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently,&quot; which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.
PORTER GOSS : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : Look, well, torture is never right. And—
AMY GOODMAN : Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : I say torture is never right. That&#8217;s my first point.
But my second point was, I&#8217;ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn&#8217;t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He&#8217;s the commander-in-chief. He&#8217;s got the constitutional authority, and that&#8217;s what he decided to do.
The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, &quot;It&#8217;s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?&quot; And Blix said, &quot;You know, it&#8217;s—that&#8217;s right.&quot; But he said, &quot;I can&#8217;t—I still don&#8217;t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty.&quot; And maybe that&#8217;s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!News"I Need a Stiff Drink After That": John Negroponte on Being Questioned by Amy Goodman over Iraq War During a conference Tuesday at Hofstra University that assessed the George W. Bush presidency, Amy Goodman asked panelists if senior administration officials should be tried for war crimes. Her question to former national intelligence director and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, drew this response:
Amy Goodman: &quot;Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?&quot;
John Negroponte: &quot;Look, well, torture is never right. And ...&quot;
Amy Goodman: &quot;Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?&quot;
John Negroponte: &quot;I say torture is never right. That&#8217;s my first point. But my second point was, I&#8217;ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution.&quot;
According to The Wall Street Journal , Negroponte continued to think about Goodman&#8217;s comments after the panel discussion was over. The article about the event ended with this remark:
&quot;Boy, I need a stiff drink after that one,&quot; Mr. Negroponte told a small group of people after the panel on which he and Ms. Goodman served. &quot;Double martini.&quot;
Click here to watch Amy Goodman&#8217;s full address at the conference, along with a response from another panelist, former CIA Director Porter Goss.
AMY GOODMAN : Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, &quot;If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently,&quot; which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.
PORTER GOSS : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : Look, well, torture is never right. And—
AMY GOODMAN : Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : I say torture is never right. That&#8217;s my first point.
But my second point was, I&#8217;ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn&#8217;t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He&#8217;s the commander-in-chief. He&#8217;s got the constitutional authority, and that&#8217;s what he decided to do.
The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, &quot;It&#8217;s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?&quot; And Blix said, &quot;You know, it&#8217;s—that&#8217;s right.&quot; But he said, &quot;I can&#8217;t—I still don&#8217;t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty.&quot; And maybe that&#8217;s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsWATCH: Amy Goodman on Moving from Assessment to Accountability for "The Bush Doctrine" on Terrorismhttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/3/26/watch_amy_goodman_on_moving_from
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-26:blog/3c24f2 Watch Amy Goodman call for accountability at a recent discussion on The Bush Doctrine and Combating Terrorism .
&quot;If we really care about national security and being a model for the world of justice,&quot; Goodman says of the George W. Bush administration&#8217;s actions after 9/11, we have &quot;to move from assessment to an accounting and to accountability.&quot; She also elicits responses from her fellow forum participants Porter Goss, former CIA director, and John Negroponte, former director of national intelligence, about the U.S.-led Iraq War, and its use of torture.
AMY GOODMAN : 9/11 was clearly a defining moment, a horrific moment, when close to 3,000 people were incinerated in an instant. The question, though, was: What did Iraq have to do with 9/11? If you ask yourself, as the last speaker suggested, &quot;What would you have done on September 12th?&quot; why would you attack a country that had nothing to do with this horrific attack on the United States?
Just today, a report has come out from the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. They&#8217;ve done some calculations. They released a report saying, &quot;This investigation comes to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, ... a total of around 1.3 million. Not included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate,&quot; they write. &quot;The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely.&quot;
One million deaths in Iraq in the last bit more than a decade, in a country the Bush administration said they were going to save, that would, as they famously said, Cheney and Rumsfeld, greet U.S. soldiers with flowers and sweets. As Vice President Cheney said, we are going to &quot;liberate&quot; the people of Iraq.
Sadly, the Bush administration exploited 9/11. The blueprint for what happened—and I think it&#8217;s important to go back, even not so far in history—was drawn up years earlier, by the Project for the New American Century. I&#8217;m reading from my first book, The Exception to the Rulers . That was called PNAC , a think tank formed in 1997 to, quote, &quot;promote American global leadership,&quot; unquote. &quot;Its founders are a who&#8217;s who of the neoconservative movement, which seamlessly morphed into the top officialdom of the Bush II administration: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney&#8217;s chief of staff L. Scooter Libby, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, and National Security Council staff member ... Elliott Abrams among others.
&quot;The PNAC members had a reputation around Washington, explained Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst with twenty-seven years&#8217; experience.&quot; As Misters Goss and Negroponte were talking about the presidential daily brief, yes, Ray McGovern was one of those CIA analysts. He did it for Vice President George H.W. Bush. But he observed, &quot;&#39;When we saw these people&#39;&quot;—he&#8217;s talking about the PNAC members—&quot;&#8217;coming back in town, all of us said ... &quot;Oh my God, the crazies are back.&quot;&#8217; McGovern said their wild-eyed geopolitical schemes would typically go &#39;right into the circular file.&#39;
&quot;In September 2000, PNAC issued a report that called upon the United States to dominate global resources ... The key to realizing this was [quote] &#39;some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.&#39;&quot;
And so you have the allegations of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq itself the pretexts for a larger scheme. &quot;According to PNAC : &#39;While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.&#39;
&#8220;And so on the morning of September 12, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld reacted to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks by declaring to Bush&#8217;s Cabinet that the United States should immediately attack Iraq. It didn&#8217;t matter then or later that Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. ...
&#8220;National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told senior National Security Council staff [quote] &#39;to think about &quot;how do you capitalize on these opportunities?&quot;&#39; She compared the situation with &#39;1945 to 1947,&#39; the start of the cold war. ...
But not all people in the National Security Council felt the way that those administration officials did. Take Richard Clarke. He had advised, oh, President Reagan and George H.W. Bush on counterterrorism. He was carried over to George W. Bush&#8217;s administration, his counterterrorism czar, and also was with President Clinton. He was shocked when Rumsfeld, the day after, said, &quot;We&#8217;ve got to look at Iraq.&quot; He was shocked when President Bush told him to look at Iraq. One of the things he told CBS&#8217;s 60 Minutes , &quot;I think&quot;—when talking about President Bush, &quot;I think he&#8217;s done a terrible job on the war against terrorism,&quot; because, he said, months before the 9/11 attacks, he had warned the administration: &quot;We&#8217;ve got to look at al-Qaeda.&quot; But to be told the day after the 9/11 attacks, &quot;You must look at Iraq&quot;? And think about it today. One million Iraqis dead.
But the Bush administration didn&#8217;t do it alone. They had a compliant press to amplify their allegations, the falsehoods. And that also has to be looked at. During the years of the Bush administration, where was the press?
&quot;The White House propaganda blitz was launched on September 7, 2002, at a Camp David press conference. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood side by side with ... President George W. Bush. Together, they declared that evidence from a report published by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ) showed that Iraq was &#39;six months away&#39; from building nuclear weapons.&quot;
President Bush said, &quot;I don&#8217;t know what more evidence we need.&quot;
Actually, any evidence would have helped. &quot;There was no such IAEA report. But at the time, few mainstream American journalists questioned the leaders&#8217; outright lies. Instead, the following day, [so-called] &#39;evidence&#39; popped up in the Sunday New York Times under the twin byline of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller. [They wrote,] &#39;More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction ... Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,&#39;&quot;—this according to Bush administration officials, they wrote.
&#8220;In a revealing example of how the story amplified administration spin, the authors included the phrase soon to be repeated by President Bush and all his top officials: &#39;The first sign of a &quot;smoking gun,&quot; [administration officials] argue, may be a mushroom cloud.&#39;
&#8220; Harper&#8217;s publisher John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War , knew what to make of this front-page bombshell. [He wrote,] &#39;In a disgraceful piece of stenography,&#39; he wrote, Gordon and Miller &#39;inflated an administration leak into something resembling imminent Armageddon.&#39;
&#8220;The Bush administration knew just what to do with the story they had fed to Gordon and Miller. The day The Times story ran, Vice President Dick Cheney made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows to advance the administration&#8217;s bogus claims. On NBC&#8217;s Meet the Press , Cheney declared that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium. It didn&#8217;t matter that the IAEA refuted the charge both before and after it was made. But Cheney did not want viewers just to take his word for it. [He said,] &#8217;There&#8217;s a story in The New York Times this morning ... And I want to attribute The Times ,&#8217; he said.
&#8220;This was the classic disinformation two-step: the White House leaks a lie to The Times , the newspaper publishes it as a startling exposé, and then the White House conveniently masquerades behind the credibility of The New York Times .
&quot;&#39;What mattered,&#39; wrote MacArthur, &#39;was the unencumbered rollout of a commercial for war.&#39;&quot;
What matters now is that we had a media in this country that acted as a conveyor belt for the lies. And why does that matter? Is it just an academic exercise? Because the lies took and are taking lives. And that&#8217;s what we have to look at.
But not all in the press were complicit. There were many on the front lines who were trying their hardest to get out the truth, on the ground in Iraq.
Which takes us to the moment the day before the U.S. marines pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. It was April 8, 2003. You had a young reporter who had just joined Al Jazeera in their Cairo—in their Baghdad offices. He went on the roof to set the camera, and he was killed when U.S. helicopters strafed the building. Across the street, Abu Dhabi TV, the hosts were shouting on the air, &quot;Help us!&quot; as they were being strafed. Within a few hours, the Palestine Hotel became a target for the U.S. military. Now, all knew at that time that the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad was where well over a hundred unembedded journalists were staying. And they were working hard. When the Abrams tank set their sights on the hotel and opened fire, they killed two reporters. Taras Protsyuk of Reuters was on his balcony filming what was happening. It was about to be the fall of Baghdad. He was with Reuters. And then there was José Couso on another balcony, also filming, for Telecinco in Spain. Both of them were immediately killed, and many others were wounded on that day. That was April 8th, 2003.
Then you come to the summer. This is the summer of 2003. Mazen Dana, another Reuters videographer, one of their finest, was outside what would later become world-famous—Abu Ghraib. But not yet. He was there with a soundman covering what was happening. They talked to U.S. soldiers. But within minutes, he filmed his own death, as the U.S. soldiers attacked him. The soundman said, &quot;We&#8217;d just been speaking with the soldiers.&quot; Later, a Pentagon spokesperson would say they accidentally, quote, &quot;engaged&quot; a cameraman.
Take this forward to the beginning, January, of 2004. Remember Eason Jordan. He was the head of CNN . Well, he was inadvertantly caught on a microphone at the World Economic Forum saying the U.S. military had targeted a dozen journalists who had been killed in Iraq. There was a great firestorm, and ultimately he resigned, after 23 years at CNN , not wanting CNN to become a target. Journalists targeted in Iraq. And those are the journalists.
Now I want to talk about the whistleblowers, the very brave people who stepped forward—for example, soldiers who were horrified by what they saw. While The New York Times very much paved the way for war, they also published a few very good op-ed pieces, like Jameel Jaffer and Larry Siems&#8217; piece , &quot;Honoring Those Who Said No.&quot; They began, &quot;In January 2004, Spec. Joseph M. Darby, a 24-year-old Army reservist in Iraq, discovered a set of photographs showing other members of his company torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. The discovery anguished him, and he struggled over how to respond. [He recalled later,] &#39;I had the choice between what I knew was morally right, and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn&#39;t have it both ways,&#8217;&quot; he said.
&quot;So he copied the photographs onto a CD, sealed it in an envelope, and delivered the envelope and an anonymous letter to the Army&#8217;s Criminal Investigation Command. Three months later—seven years ago today,&quot; they wrote, &quot;—the photographs were published. Specialist Darby soon found himself the target of death threats, but he had no regrets. Testifying at a pretrial hearing for a fellow soldier, he said that the abuse [quote] &#39;violated everything I personally believed in and all I&#39;d been taught about the rules of war.&#8217;&quot;
Yes, there are many brave people, people on the ground, soldiers, journalists, who did speak out. Sy Hersh, who published those photos in The New Yorker , said—and they were horrific—said, &quot;You actually haven&#8217;t seen the worst of them yet.&quot;
So now let&#8217;s talk about what Mr. Goss and Mr. Negroponte didn&#8217;t talk about: the word &quot;torture.&quot; There is no doubt torture played a major role in the push for invading Iraq. And while the Senate report and other critics say torture produced false information, that could have been one of the program&#8217;s goals.
In 2009, McClatchy reported , &quot;The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and ... Saddam Hussein&#8217;s regime.&quot; A former senior U.S. intelligence official said, quote, &quot;There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney&#8217;s and Rumsfeld&#8217;s people to push harder,&quot; this person said.
The Iraq-torture connection gets only bare mention in the Senate intelligence report, the executive summary which was released in December. But it&#8217;s still significant. In a footnote, the report cites the case of Ibn Shaykh al-Libi. After U.S. forces sent him for torture in Egypt, Libi made up the false claim that Iraq provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda. Secretary of State Colin Powell then used Libi&#8217;s statements in his famous February 5th, 2003, address to the U.N. Security Council, an address he would later call a &quot;stain&quot; on his career, that speech at the U.N. falsely alleging Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Senate report says, quote, &quot;Libi [later] recanted the claim ... claiming that he had been tortured ... and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear.&quot;
Torture—it is so important to talk about this today, what has gone on and who should be held accountable. The Senate intelligence report, the executive order was—the executive summary was released in December, and it covered between 2002 and 2006. Even Senator John McCain—well, a man who himself was tortured in captivity as a POW in Vietnam—called for its release.
Graphic new details of the post-9/11 U.S. torture program came to light in December, when the Senate Intelligence Committee released that 500-page summary of its investigation into the CIA , with key parts redacted. The report concludes that the intelligence agency failed to disrupt a single plot, despite torturing al-Qaeda and other captives in secret prisons worldwide between 2002 and &#8217;06, and details a list of torture methods used on prisoners, including waterboarding, sexual threats with broomsticks, medically unnecessary &quot;rectal feeding.&quot; The report also confirms the CIA ran black sites in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Thailand, and a secret site on the Guantánamo Naval Base known as Strawberry Fields.
So far, no one involved in the CIA interrogation program has been charged with a crime, except for the whistleblower, John Kiriakou, who just came out of two years of prison and is currently under house arrest.
Well, it is so important to assess the Bush administration, and I hope in a few years you&#8217;ll be doing the same for the Obama administration, as you have done in the past. Should President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and CIA officials be tried for torture? That is a very serious question. A human rights group in Berlin has filed a criminal complaint against the architects of the Bush administration&#8217;s torture program—it&#8217;s called the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights—accusing former Bush administration officials, like CIA Director George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld, of war crimes, calling for an immediate investigation by a German prosecutor—the move following the release of the Senate report. But it is not only international law groups that are calling for this. Yes, President Bush&#8217;s own counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, has called for the same.
I want to congratulate Hofstra for holding this assessment of the Bush administration. But I think now it has to go beyond assessment. And this is to a larger audience in this country and around the world. If we really care about national security and being a model for the world of justice, it has to move from assessment to an accounting and to accountability.
PORTER GOSS : In the interests of fairness, would respond a little bit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study on rendition, detention and interrogation—was a partisan political study. It was not two-sided. And there are further facts that need to come out from those who are able to, I think, correct some of the misstatements in the Senate study. That has not happened yet. I hope it will happen, because I do believe the American public needs to know the truth of all of this. The Senate study is not the full truth.
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
MODERATOR : Could you say again?
PORTER GOSS : What?
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
PORTER GOSS : Of course there was some truth in it. It was a cherry-picked, selective presentation of information to support a narrative that was made before this report actually even was started. The announced purpose of the report, of the study, if I&#8217;m correcting Chairman Feinstein—if I&#8217;m quoting Chairman Feinstein properly, was to make sure this never happens again. I&#8217;m not sure what the &quot;this&quot; was, or neither are a lot of people. But apparently, as you go through the report, as you go through this study, there are a series of observations that involved information that the decision makers could have provided to the people doing the report and would have given a fairer and more complete understanding of what happened and why. If you want to know why something happened, it&#8217;s a good idea to go back to the people who made the decision and ask them. They calculatedly and determinedly avoided going back to anybody that they thought might spoil their narrative. So, consequently, yes, there is some information that is cherry-picked, some out of context and some actually factually correct, as far as I know. I have not read a word of the report. I have not read a word of any of this stuff, because, to me, it is purely partisan political. And a politicization of intelligence in this country is going to hurt only one person, and that&#8217;s every citizen in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN : I just wanted to quote Senator McCain, who—
PORTER GOSS : I love Senator McCain, and I would certainly agree with you that Senator McCain is the icon of prisoner of war conduct. He has suffered greatly for our country and made great sacrifices and deserves to be listened to. But he does not have all of the information either.
AMY GOODMAN : He said, &quot;It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose—to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies—but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.&quot;
PORTER GOSS : He is welcome to his opinion. I doubt he&#8217;s read the report. And in any event, he has certainly not asked the people who were involved in this activity what they think, because they have all indicated that he has not asked them. So, even he is dealing with less than a full deck.
AMY GOODMAN : Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, &quot;If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently,&quot; which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.
PORTER GOSS : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : Look, well, torture is never right. And—
AMY GOODMAN : Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : I say torture is never right. That&#8217;s my first point.
But my second point was, I&#8217;ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn&#8217;t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He&#8217;s the commander-in-chief. He&#8217;s got the constitutional authority, and that&#8217;s what he decided to do.
The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, &quot;It&#8217;s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?&quot; And Blix said, &quot;You know, it&#8217;s—that&#8217;s right.&quot; But he said, &quot;I can&#8217;t—I still don&#8217;t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty.&quot; And maybe that&#8217;s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged.
Watch Amy Goodman call for accountability at a recent discussion on The Bush Doctrine and Combating Terrorism.

"If we really care about national security and being a model for the world of justice," Goodman says of the George W. Bush administration’s actions after 9/11, we have "to move from assessment to an accounting and to accountability." She also elicits responses from her fellow forum participants Porter Goss, former CIA director, and John Negroponte, former director of national intelligence, about the U.S.-led Iraq War, and its use of torture.

AMYGOODMAN: 9/11 was clearly a defining moment, a horrific moment, when close to 3,000 people were incinerated in an instant. The question, though, was: What did Iraq have to do with 9/11? If you ask yourself, as the last speaker suggested, "What would you have done on September 12th?" why would you attack a country that had nothing to do with this horrific attack on the United States?

Just today, a report has come out from the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. They’ve done some calculations. They released a report saying, "This investigation comes to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, ... a total of around 1.3 million. Not included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate," they write. "The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely."

One million deaths in Iraq in the last bit more than a decade, in a country the Bush administration said they were going to save, that would, as they famously said, Cheney and Rumsfeld, greet U.S. soldiers with flowers and sweets. As Vice President Cheney said, we are going to "liberate" the people of Iraq.

Sadly, the Bush administration exploited 9/11. The blueprint for what happened—and I think it’s important to go back, even not so far in history—was drawn up years earlier, by the Project for the New American Century. I’m reading from my first book, The Exception to the Rulers. That was called PNAC, a think tank formed in 1997 to, quote, "promote American global leadership," unquote. "Its founders are a who’s who of the neoconservative movement, which seamlessly morphed into the top officialdom of the Bush II administration: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney’s chief of staff L. Scooter Libby, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, and National Security Council staff member ... Elliott Abrams among others.

"The PNAC members had a reputation around Washington, explained Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst with twenty-seven years’ experience." As Misters Goss and Negroponte were talking about the presidential daily brief, yes, Ray McGovern was one of those CIA analysts. He did it for Vice President George H.W. Bush. But he observed, "'When we saw these people'"—he’s talking about the PNAC members—"’coming back in town, all of us said ... "Oh my God, the crazies are back."’ McGovern said their wild-eyed geopolitical schemes would typically go 'right into the circular file.'

"In September 2000, PNAC issued a report that called upon the United States to dominate global resources ... The key to realizing this was [quote] 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.'"

And so you have the allegations of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq itself the pretexts for a larger scheme. "According to PNAC: 'While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

“And so on the morning of September 12, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld reacted to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks by declaring to Bush’s Cabinet that the United States should immediately attack Iraq. It didn’t matter then or later that Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. ...

“National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told senior National Security Council staff [quote] 'to think about "how do you capitalize on these opportunities?"' She compared the situation with '1945 to 1947,' the start of the cold war. ...

But not all people in the National Security Council felt the way that those administration officials did. Take Richard Clarke. He had advised, oh, President Reagan and George H.W. Bush on counterterrorism. He was carried over to George W. Bush’s administration, his counterterrorism czar, and also was with President Clinton. He was shocked when Rumsfeld, the day after, said, "We’ve got to look at Iraq." He was shocked when President Bush told him to look at Iraq. One of the things he told CBS’s 60 Minutes, "I think"—when talking about President Bush, "I think he’s done a terrible job on the war against terrorism," because, he said, months before the 9/11 attacks, he had warned the administration: "We’ve got to look at al-Qaeda." But to be told the day after the 9/11 attacks, "You must look at Iraq"? And think about it today. One million Iraqis dead.

But the Bush administration didn’t do it alone. They had a compliant press to amplify their allegations, the falsehoods. And that also has to be looked at. During the years of the Bush administration, where was the press?

"The White House propaganda blitz was launched on September 7, 2002, at a Camp David press conference. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood side by side with ... President George W. Bush. Together, they declared that evidence from a report published by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed that Iraq was 'six months away' from building nuclear weapons."

President Bush said, "I don’t know what more evidence we need."

Actually, any evidence would have helped. "There was no such IAEA report. But at the time, few mainstream American journalists questioned the leaders’ outright lies. Instead, the following day, [so-called] 'evidence' popped up in the Sunday New York Times under the twin byline of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller. [They wrote,] 'More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction ... Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,'"—this according to Bush administration officials, they wrote.

“In a revealing example of how the story amplified administration spin, the authors included the phrase soon to be repeated by President Bush and all his top officials: 'The first sign of a "smoking gun," [administration officials] argue, may be a mushroom cloud.'

“Harper’s publisher John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, knew what to make of this front-page bombshell. [He wrote,] 'In a disgraceful piece of stenography,' he wrote, Gordon and Miller 'inflated an administration leak into something resembling imminent Armageddon.'

“The Bush administration knew just what to do with the story they had fed to Gordon and Miller. The day The Times story ran, Vice President Dick Cheney made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows to advance the administration’s bogus claims. On NBC’s Meet the Press, Cheney declared that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium. It didn’t matter that the IAEA refuted the charge both before and after it was made. But Cheney did not want viewers just to take his word for it. [He said,] ’There’s a story in The New York Times this morning ... And I want to attribute The Times,’ he said.

“This was the classic disinformation two-step: the White House leaks a lie to The Times, the newspaper publishes it as a startling exposé, and then the White House conveniently masquerades behind the credibility of The New York Times.

"'What mattered,' wrote MacArthur, 'was the unencumbered rollout of a commercial for war.'"

What matters now is that we had a media in this country that acted as a conveyor belt for the lies. And why does that matter? Is it just an academic exercise? Because the lies took and are taking lives. And that’s what we have to look at.

But not all in the press were complicit. There were many on the front lines who were trying their hardest to get out the truth, on the ground in Iraq.

Which takes us to the moment the day before the U.S. marines pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. It was April 8, 2003. You had a young reporter who had just joined Al Jazeera in their Cairo—in their Baghdad offices. He went on the roof to set the camera, and he was killed when U.S. helicopters strafed the building. Across the street, Abu Dhabi TV, the hosts were shouting on the air, "Help us!" as they were being strafed. Within a few hours, the Palestine Hotel became a target for the U.S. military. Now, all knew at that time that the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad was where well over a hundred unembedded journalists were staying. And they were working hard. When the Abrams tank set their sights on the hotel and opened fire, they killed two reporters. Taras Protsyuk of Reuters was on his balcony filming what was happening. It was about to be the fall of Baghdad. He was with Reuters. And then there was José Couso on another balcony, also filming, for Telecinco in Spain. Both of them were immediately killed, and many others were wounded on that day. That was April 8th, 2003.

Then you come to the summer. This is the summer of 2003. Mazen Dana, another Reuters videographer, one of their finest, was outside what would later become world-famous—Abu Ghraib. But not yet. He was there with a soundman covering what was happening. They talked to U.S. soldiers. But within minutes, he filmed his own death, as the U.S. soldiers attacked him. The soundman said, "We’d just been speaking with the soldiers." Later, a Pentagon spokesperson would say they accidentally, quote, "engaged" a cameraman.

Take this forward to the beginning, January, of 2004. Remember Eason Jordan. He was the head of CNN. Well, he was inadvertantly caught on a microphone at the World Economic Forum saying the U.S. military had targeted a dozen journalists who had been killed in Iraq. There was a great firestorm, and ultimately he resigned, after 23 years at CNN, not wanting CNN to become a target. Journalists targeted in Iraq. And those are the journalists.

Now I want to talk about the whistleblowers, the very brave people who stepped forward—for example, soldiers who were horrified by what they saw. While The New York Times very much paved the way for war, they also published a few very good op-ed pieces, like Jameel Jaffer and Larry Siems’ piece, "Honoring Those Who Said No." They began, "In January 2004, Spec. Joseph M. Darby, a 24-year-old Army reservist in Iraq, discovered a set of photographs showing other members of his company torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. The discovery anguished him, and he struggled over how to respond. [He recalled later,] 'I had the choice between what I knew was morally right, and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn't have it both ways,’" he said.

"So he copied the photographs onto a CD, sealed it in an envelope, and delivered the envelope and an anonymous letter to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. Three months later—seven years ago today," they wrote, "—the photographs were published. Specialist Darby soon found himself the target of death threats, but he had no regrets. Testifying at a pretrial hearing for a fellow soldier, he said that the abuse [quote] 'violated everything I personally believed in and all I'd been taught about the rules of war.’"

Yes, there are many brave people, people on the ground, soldiers, journalists, who did speak out. Sy Hersh, who published those photos in The New Yorker, said—and they were horrific—said, "You actually haven’t seen the worst of them yet."

So now let’s talk about what Mr. Goss and Mr. Negroponte didn’t talk about: the word "torture." There is no doubt torture played a major role in the push for invading Iraq. And while the Senate report and other critics say torture produced false information, that could have been one of the program’s goals.

In 2009, McClatchy reported, "The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and ... Saddam Hussein’s regime." A former senior U.S. intelligence official said, quote, "There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder," this person said.

The Iraq-torture connection gets only bare mention in the Senate intelligence report, the executive summary which was released in December. But it’s still significant. In a footnote, the report cites the case of Ibn Shaykh al-Libi. After U.S. forces sent him for torture in Egypt, Libi made up the false claim that Iraq provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda. Secretary of State Colin Powell then used Libi’s statements in his famous February 5th, 2003, address to the U.N. Security Council, an address he would later call a "stain" on his career, that speech at the U.N. falsely alleging Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Senate report says, quote, "Libi [later] recanted the claim ... claiming that he had been tortured ... and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear."

Torture—it is so important to talk about this today, what has gone on and who should be held accountable. The Senate intelligence report, the executive order was—the executive summary was released in December, and it covered between 2002 and 2006. Even Senator John McCain—well, a man who himself was tortured in captivity as a POW in Vietnam—called for its release.

Graphic new details of the post-9/11 U.S. torture program came to light in December, when the Senate Intelligence Committee released that 500-page summary of its investigation into the CIA, with key parts redacted. The report concludes that the intelligence agency failed to disrupt a single plot, despite torturing al-Qaeda and other captives in secret prisons worldwide between 2002 and ’06, and details a list of torture methods used on prisoners, including waterboarding, sexual threats with broomsticks, medically unnecessary "rectal feeding." The report also confirms the CIA ran black sites in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Thailand, and a secret site on the Guantánamo Naval Base known as Strawberry Fields.

So far, no one involved in the CIA interrogation program has been charged with a crime, except for the whistleblower, John Kiriakou, who just came out of two years of prison and is currently under house arrest.

Well, it is so important to assess the Bush administration, and I hope in a few years you’ll be doing the same for the Obama administration, as you have done in the past. Should President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and CIA officials be tried for torture? That is a very serious question. A human rights group in Berlin has filed a criminal complaint against the architects of the Bush administration’s torture program—it’s called the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights—accusing former Bush administration officials, like CIA Director George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld, of war crimes, calling for an immediate investigation by a German prosecutor—the move following the release of the Senate report. But it is not only international law groups that are calling for this. Yes, President Bush’s own counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, has called for the same.

I want to congratulate Hofstra for holding this assessment of the Bush administration. But I think now it has to go beyond assessment. And this is to a larger audience in this country and around the world. If we really care about national security and being a model for the world of justice, it has to move from assessment to an accounting and to accountability.

PORTERGOSS: In the interests of fairness, would respond a little bit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study on rendition, detention and interrogation—was a partisan political study. It was not two-sided. And there are further facts that need to come out from those who are able to, I think, correct some of the misstatements in the Senate study. That has not happened yet. I hope it will happen, because I do believe the American public needs to know the truth of all of this. The Senate study is not the full truth.

AMYGOODMAN: Was there any truth in it?

MODERATOR: Could you say again?

PORTERGOSS: What?

AMYGOODMAN: Was there any truth in it?

PORTERGOSS: Of course there was some truth in it. It was a cherry-picked, selective presentation of information to support a narrative that was made before this report actually even was started. The announced purpose of the report, of the study, if I’m correcting Chairman Feinstein—if I’m quoting Chairman Feinstein properly, was to make sure this never happens again. I’m not sure what the "this" was, or neither are a lot of people. But apparently, as you go through the report, as you go through this study, there are a series of observations that involved information that the decision makers could have provided to the people doing the report and would have given a fairer and more complete understanding of what happened and why. If you want to know why something happened, it’s a good idea to go back to the people who made the decision and ask them. They calculatedly and determinedly avoided going back to anybody that they thought might spoil their narrative. So, consequently, yes, there is some information that is cherry-picked, some out of context and some actually factually correct, as far as I know. I have not read a word of the report. I have not read a word of any of this stuff, because, to me, it is purely partisan political. And a politicization of intelligence in this country is going to hurt only one person, and that’s every citizen in the United States.

AMYGOODMAN: I just wanted to quote Senator McCain, who—

PORTERGOSS: I love Senator McCain, and I would certainly agree with you that Senator McCain is the icon of prisoner of war conduct. He has suffered greatly for our country and made great sacrifices and deserves to be listened to. But he does not have all of the information either.

AMYGOODMAN: He said, "It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose—to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies—but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world."

PORTERGOSS: He is welcome to his opinion. I doubt he’s read the report. And in any event, he has certainly not asked the people who were involved in this activity what they think, because they have all indicated that he has not asked them. So, even he is dealing with less than a full deck.

AMYGOODMAN: Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, "If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently," which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.

PORTERGOSS: Thank you.

AMYGOODMAN: Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?

JOHNNEGROPONTE: Look, well, torture is never right. And—

AMYGOODMAN: Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?

JOHNNEGROPONTE: I say torture is never right. That’s my first point.

But my second point was, I’ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn’t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He’s the commander-in-chief. He’s got the constitutional authority, and that’s what he decided to do.

The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, "It’s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?" And Blix said, "You know, it’s—that’s right." But he said, "I can’t—I still don’t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty." And maybe that’s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged.

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Thu, 26 Mar 2015 19:10:00 -0400WATCH: Amy Goodman on Moving from Assessment to Accountability for "The Bush Doctrine" on Terrorism Watch Amy Goodman call for accountability at a recent discussion on The Bush Doctrine and Combating Terrorism .
&quot;If we really care about national security and being a model for the world of justice,&quot; Goodman says of the George W. Bush administration&#8217;s actions after 9/11, we have &quot;to move from assessment to an accounting and to accountability.&quot; She also elicits responses from her fellow forum participants Porter Goss, former CIA director, and John Negroponte, former director of national intelligence, about the U.S.-led Iraq War, and its use of torture.
AMY GOODMAN : 9/11 was clearly a defining moment, a horrific moment, when close to 3,000 people were incinerated in an instant. The question, though, was: What did Iraq have to do with 9/11? If you ask yourself, as the last speaker suggested, &quot;What would you have done on September 12th?&quot; why would you attack a country that had nothing to do with this horrific attack on the United States?
Just today, a report has come out from the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. They&#8217;ve done some calculations. They released a report saying, &quot;This investigation comes to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, ... a total of around 1.3 million. Not included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate,&quot; they write. &quot;The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely.&quot;
One million deaths in Iraq in the last bit more than a decade, in a country the Bush administration said they were going to save, that would, as they famously said, Cheney and Rumsfeld, greet U.S. soldiers with flowers and sweets. As Vice President Cheney said, we are going to &quot;liberate&quot; the people of Iraq.
Sadly, the Bush administration exploited 9/11. The blueprint for what happened—and I think it&#8217;s important to go back, even not so far in history—was drawn up years earlier, by the Project for the New American Century. I&#8217;m reading from my first book, The Exception to the Rulers . That was called PNAC , a think tank formed in 1997 to, quote, &quot;promote American global leadership,&quot; unquote. &quot;Its founders are a who&#8217;s who of the neoconservative movement, which seamlessly morphed into the top officialdom of the Bush II administration: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney&#8217;s chief of staff L. Scooter Libby, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, and National Security Council staff member ... Elliott Abrams among others.
&quot;The PNAC members had a reputation around Washington, explained Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst with twenty-seven years&#8217; experience.&quot; As Misters Goss and Negroponte were talking about the presidential daily brief, yes, Ray McGovern was one of those CIA analysts. He did it for Vice President George H.W. Bush. But he observed, &quot;&#39;When we saw these people&#39;&quot;—he&#8217;s talking about the PNAC members—&quot;&#8217;coming back in town, all of us said ... &quot;Oh my God, the crazies are back.&quot;&#8217; McGovern said their wild-eyed geopolitical schemes would typically go &#39;right into the circular file.&#39;
&quot;In September 2000, PNAC issued a report that called upon the United States to dominate global resources ... The key to realizing this was [quote] &#39;some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.&#39;&quot;
And so you have the allegations of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq itself the pretexts for a larger scheme. &quot;According to PNAC : &#39;While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.&#39;
&#8220;And so on the morning of September 12, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld reacted to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks by declaring to Bush&#8217;s Cabinet that the United States should immediately attack Iraq. It didn&#8217;t matter then or later that Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. ...
&#8220;National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told senior National Security Council staff [quote] &#39;to think about &quot;how do you capitalize on these opportunities?&quot;&#39; She compared the situation with &#39;1945 to 1947,&#39; the start of the cold war. ...
But not all people in the National Security Council felt the way that those administration officials did. Take Richard Clarke. He had advised, oh, President Reagan and George H.W. Bush on counterterrorism. He was carried over to George W. Bush&#8217;s administration, his counterterrorism czar, and also was with President Clinton. He was shocked when Rumsfeld, the day after, said, &quot;We&#8217;ve got to look at Iraq.&quot; He was shocked when President Bush told him to look at Iraq. One of the things he told CBS&#8217;s 60 Minutes , &quot;I think&quot;—when talking about President Bush, &quot;I think he&#8217;s done a terrible job on the war against terrorism,&quot; because, he said, months before the 9/11 attacks, he had warned the administration: &quot;We&#8217;ve got to look at al-Qaeda.&quot; But to be told the day after the 9/11 attacks, &quot;You must look at Iraq&quot;? And think about it today. One million Iraqis dead.
But the Bush administration didn&#8217;t do it alone. They had a compliant press to amplify their allegations, the falsehoods. And that also has to be looked at. During the years of the Bush administration, where was the press?
&quot;The White House propaganda blitz was launched on September 7, 2002, at a Camp David press conference. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood side by side with ... President George W. Bush. Together, they declared that evidence from a report published by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ) showed that Iraq was &#39;six months away&#39; from building nuclear weapons.&quot;
President Bush said, &quot;I don&#8217;t know what more evidence we need.&quot;
Actually, any evidence would have helped. &quot;There was no such IAEA report. But at the time, few mainstream American journalists questioned the leaders&#8217; outright lies. Instead, the following day, [so-called] &#39;evidence&#39; popped up in the Sunday New York Times under the twin byline of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller. [They wrote,] &#39;More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction ... Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,&#39;&quot;—this according to Bush administration officials, they wrote.
&#8220;In a revealing example of how the story amplified administration spin, the authors included the phrase soon to be repeated by President Bush and all his top officials: &#39;The first sign of a &quot;smoking gun,&quot; [administration officials] argue, may be a mushroom cloud.&#39;
&#8220; Harper&#8217;s publisher John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War , knew what to make of this front-page bombshell. [He wrote,] &#39;In a disgraceful piece of stenography,&#39; he wrote, Gordon and Miller &#39;inflated an administration leak into something resembling imminent Armageddon.&#39;
&#8220;The Bush administration knew just what to do with the story they had fed to Gordon and Miller. The day The Times story ran, Vice President Dick Cheney made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows to advance the administration&#8217;s bogus claims. On NBC&#8217;s Meet the Press , Cheney declared that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium. It didn&#8217;t matter that the IAEA refuted the charge both before and after it was made. But Cheney did not want viewers just to take his word for it. [He said,] &#8217;There&#8217;s a story in The New York Times this morning ... And I want to attribute The Times ,&#8217; he said.
&#8220;This was the classic disinformation two-step: the White House leaks a lie to The Times , the newspaper publishes it as a startling exposé, and then the White House conveniently masquerades behind the credibility of The New York Times .
&quot;&#39;What mattered,&#39; wrote MacArthur, &#39;was the unencumbered rollout of a commercial for war.&#39;&quot;
What matters now is that we had a media in this country that acted as a conveyor belt for the lies. And why does that matter? Is it just an academic exercise? Because the lies took and are taking lives. And that&#8217;s what we have to look at.
But not all in the press were complicit. There were many on the front lines who were trying their hardest to get out the truth, on the ground in Iraq.
Which takes us to the moment the day before the U.S. marines pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. It was April 8, 2003. You had a young reporter who had just joined Al Jazeera in their Cairo—in their Baghdad offices. He went on the roof to set the camera, and he was killed when U.S. helicopters strafed the building. Across the street, Abu Dhabi TV, the hosts were shouting on the air, &quot;Help us!&quot; as they were being strafed. Within a few hours, the Palestine Hotel became a target for the U.S. military. Now, all knew at that time that the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad was where well over a hundred unembedded journalists were staying. And they were working hard. When the Abrams tank set their sights on the hotel and opened fire, they killed two reporters. Taras Protsyuk of Reuters was on his balcony filming what was happening. It was about to be the fall of Baghdad. He was with Reuters. And then there was José Couso on another balcony, also filming, for Telecinco in Spain. Both of them were immediately killed, and many others were wounded on that day. That was April 8th, 2003.
Then you come to the summer. This is the summer of 2003. Mazen Dana, another Reuters videographer, one of their finest, was outside what would later become world-famous—Abu Ghraib. But not yet. He was there with a soundman covering what was happening. They talked to U.S. soldiers. But within minutes, he filmed his own death, as the U.S. soldiers attacked him. The soundman said, &quot;We&#8217;d just been speaking with the soldiers.&quot; Later, a Pentagon spokesperson would say they accidentally, quote, &quot;engaged&quot; a cameraman.
Take this forward to the beginning, January, of 2004. Remember Eason Jordan. He was the head of CNN . Well, he was inadvertantly caught on a microphone at the World Economic Forum saying the U.S. military had targeted a dozen journalists who had been killed in Iraq. There was a great firestorm, and ultimately he resigned, after 23 years at CNN , not wanting CNN to become a target. Journalists targeted in Iraq. And those are the journalists.
Now I want to talk about the whistleblowers, the very brave people who stepped forward—for example, soldiers who were horrified by what they saw. While The New York Times very much paved the way for war, they also published a few very good op-ed pieces, like Jameel Jaffer and Larry Siems&#8217; piece , &quot;Honoring Those Who Said No.&quot; They began, &quot;In January 2004, Spec. Joseph M. Darby, a 24-year-old Army reservist in Iraq, discovered a set of photographs showing other members of his company torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. The discovery anguished him, and he struggled over how to respond. [He recalled later,] &#39;I had the choice between what I knew was morally right, and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn&#39;t have it both ways,&#8217;&quot; he said.
&quot;So he copied the photographs onto a CD, sealed it in an envelope, and delivered the envelope and an anonymous letter to the Army&#8217;s Criminal Investigation Command. Three months later—seven years ago today,&quot; they wrote, &quot;—the photographs were published. Specialist Darby soon found himself the target of death threats, but he had no regrets. Testifying at a pretrial hearing for a fellow soldier, he said that the abuse [quote] &#39;violated everything I personally believed in and all I&#39;d been taught about the rules of war.&#8217;&quot;
Yes, there are many brave people, people on the ground, soldiers, journalists, who did speak out. Sy Hersh, who published those photos in The New Yorker , said—and they were horrific—said, &quot;You actually haven&#8217;t seen the worst of them yet.&quot;
So now let&#8217;s talk about what Mr. Goss and Mr. Negroponte didn&#8217;t talk about: the word &quot;torture.&quot; There is no doubt torture played a major role in the push for invading Iraq. And while the Senate report and other critics say torture produced false information, that could have been one of the program&#8217;s goals.
In 2009, McClatchy reported , &quot;The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and ... Saddam Hussein&#8217;s regime.&quot; A former senior U.S. intelligence official said, quote, &quot;There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney&#8217;s and Rumsfeld&#8217;s people to push harder,&quot; this person said.
The Iraq-torture connection gets only bare mention in the Senate intelligence report, the executive summary which was released in December. But it&#8217;s still significant. In a footnote, the report cites the case of Ibn Shaykh al-Libi. After U.S. forces sent him for torture in Egypt, Libi made up the false claim that Iraq provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda. Secretary of State Colin Powell then used Libi&#8217;s statements in his famous February 5th, 2003, address to the U.N. Security Council, an address he would later call a &quot;stain&quot; on his career, that speech at the U.N. falsely alleging Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Senate report says, quote, &quot;Libi [later] recanted the claim ... claiming that he had been tortured ... and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear.&quot;
Torture—it is so important to talk about this today, what has gone on and who should be held accountable. The Senate intelligence report, the executive order was—the executive summary was released in December, and it covered between 2002 and 2006. Even Senator John McCain—well, a man who himself was tortured in captivity as a POW in Vietnam—called for its release.
Graphic new details of the post-9/11 U.S. torture program came to light in December, when the Senate Intelligence Committee released that 500-page summary of its investigation into the CIA , with key parts redacted. The report concludes that the intelligence agency failed to disrupt a single plot, despite torturing al-Qaeda and other captives in secret prisons worldwide between 2002 and &#8217;06, and details a list of torture methods used on prisoners, including waterboarding, sexual threats with broomsticks, medically unnecessary &quot;rectal feeding.&quot; The report also confirms the CIA ran black sites in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Thailand, and a secret site on the Guantánamo Naval Base known as Strawberry Fields.
So far, no one involved in the CIA interrogation program has been charged with a crime, except for the whistleblower, John Kiriakou, who just came out of two years of prison and is currently under house arrest.
Well, it is so important to assess the Bush administration, and I hope in a few years you&#8217;ll be doing the same for the Obama administration, as you have done in the past. Should President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and CIA officials be tried for torture? That is a very serious question. A human rights group in Berlin has filed a criminal complaint against the architects of the Bush administration&#8217;s torture program—it&#8217;s called the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights—accusing former Bush administration officials, like CIA Director George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld, of war crimes, calling for an immediate investigation by a German prosecutor—the move following the release of the Senate report. But it is not only international law groups that are calling for this. Yes, President Bush&#8217;s own counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, has called for the same.
I want to congratulate Hofstra for holding this assessment of the Bush administration. But I think now it has to go beyond assessment. And this is to a larger audience in this country and around the world. If we really care about national security and being a model for the world of justice, it has to move from assessment to an accounting and to accountability.
PORTER GOSS : In the interests of fairness, would respond a little bit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study on rendition, detention and interrogation—was a partisan political study. It was not two-sided. And there are further facts that need to come out from those who are able to, I think, correct some of the misstatements in the Senate study. That has not happened yet. I hope it will happen, because I do believe the American public needs to know the truth of all of this. The Senate study is not the full truth.
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
MODERATOR : Could you say again?
PORTER GOSS : What?
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
PORTER GOSS : Of course there was some truth in it. It was a cherry-picked, selective presentation of information to support a narrative that was made before this report actually even was started. The announced purpose of the report, of the study, if I&#8217;m correcting Chairman Feinstein—if I&#8217;m quoting Chairman Feinstein properly, was to make sure this never happens again. I&#8217;m not sure what the &quot;this&quot; was, or neither are a lot of people. But apparently, as you go through the report, as you go through this study, there are a series of observations that involved information that the decision makers could have provided to the people doing the report and would have given a fairer and more complete understanding of what happened and why. If you want to know why something happened, it&#8217;s a good idea to go back to the people who made the decision and ask them. They calculatedly and determinedly avoided going back to anybody that they thought might spoil their narrative. So, consequently, yes, there is some information that is cherry-picked, some out of context and some actually factually correct, as far as I know. I have not read a word of the report. I have not read a word of any of this stuff, because, to me, it is purely partisan political. And a politicization of intelligence in this country is going to hurt only one person, and that&#8217;s every citizen in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN : I just wanted to quote Senator McCain, who—
PORTER GOSS : I love Senator McCain, and I would certainly agree with you that Senator McCain is the icon of prisoner of war conduct. He has suffered greatly for our country and made great sacrifices and deserves to be listened to. But he does not have all of the information either.
AMY GOODMAN : He said, &quot;It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose—to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies—but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.&quot;
PORTER GOSS : He is welcome to his opinion. I doubt he&#8217;s read the report. And in any event, he has certainly not asked the people who were involved in this activity what they think, because they have all indicated that he has not asked them. So, even he is dealing with less than a full deck.
AMY GOODMAN : Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, &quot;If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently,&quot; which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.
PORTER GOSS : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : Look, well, torture is never right. And—
AMY GOODMAN : Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : I say torture is never right. That&#8217;s my first point.
But my second point was, I&#8217;ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn&#8217;t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He&#8217;s the commander-in-chief. He&#8217;s got the constitutional authority, and that&#8217;s what he decided to do.
The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, &quot;It&#8217;s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?&quot; And Blix said, &quot;You know, it&#8217;s—that&#8217;s right.&quot; But he said, &quot;I can&#8217;t—I still don&#8217;t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty.&quot; And maybe that&#8217;s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsWATCH: Amy Goodman on Moving from Assessment to Accountability for "The Bush Doctrine" on Terrorism Watch Amy Goodman call for accountability at a recent discussion on The Bush Doctrine and Combating Terrorism .
&quot;If we really care about national security and being a model for the world of justice,&quot; Goodman says of the George W. Bush administration&#8217;s actions after 9/11, we have &quot;to move from assessment to an accounting and to accountability.&quot; She also elicits responses from her fellow forum participants Porter Goss, former CIA director, and John Negroponte, former director of national intelligence, about the U.S.-led Iraq War, and its use of torture.
AMY GOODMAN : 9/11 was clearly a defining moment, a horrific moment, when close to 3,000 people were incinerated in an instant. The question, though, was: What did Iraq have to do with 9/11? If you ask yourself, as the last speaker suggested, &quot;What would you have done on September 12th?&quot; why would you attack a country that had nothing to do with this horrific attack on the United States?
Just today, a report has come out from the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. They&#8217;ve done some calculations. They released a report saying, &quot;This investigation comes to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, ... a total of around 1.3 million. Not included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate,&quot; they write. &quot;The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely.&quot;
One million deaths in Iraq in the last bit more than a decade, in a country the Bush administration said they were going to save, that would, as they famously said, Cheney and Rumsfeld, greet U.S. soldiers with flowers and sweets. As Vice President Cheney said, we are going to &quot;liberate&quot; the people of Iraq.
Sadly, the Bush administration exploited 9/11. The blueprint for what happened—and I think it&#8217;s important to go back, even not so far in history—was drawn up years earlier, by the Project for the New American Century. I&#8217;m reading from my first book, The Exception to the Rulers . That was called PNAC , a think tank formed in 1997 to, quote, &quot;promote American global leadership,&quot; unquote. &quot;Its founders are a who&#8217;s who of the neoconservative movement, which seamlessly morphed into the top officialdom of the Bush II administration: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney&#8217;s chief of staff L. Scooter Libby, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, and National Security Council staff member ... Elliott Abrams among others.
&quot;The PNAC members had a reputation around Washington, explained Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst with twenty-seven years&#8217; experience.&quot; As Misters Goss and Negroponte were talking about the presidential daily brief, yes, Ray McGovern was one of those CIA analysts. He did it for Vice President George H.W. Bush. But he observed, &quot;&#39;When we saw these people&#39;&quot;—he&#8217;s talking about the PNAC members—&quot;&#8217;coming back in town, all of us said ... &quot;Oh my God, the crazies are back.&quot;&#8217; McGovern said their wild-eyed geopolitical schemes would typically go &#39;right into the circular file.&#39;
&quot;In September 2000, PNAC issued a report that called upon the United States to dominate global resources ... The key to realizing this was [quote] &#39;some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.&#39;&quot;
And so you have the allegations of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq itself the pretexts for a larger scheme. &quot;According to PNAC : &#39;While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.&#39;
&#8220;And so on the morning of September 12, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld reacted to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks by declaring to Bush&#8217;s Cabinet that the United States should immediately attack Iraq. It didn&#8217;t matter then or later that Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. ...
&#8220;National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told senior National Security Council staff [quote] &#39;to think about &quot;how do you capitalize on these opportunities?&quot;&#39; She compared the situation with &#39;1945 to 1947,&#39; the start of the cold war. ...
But not all people in the National Security Council felt the way that those administration officials did. Take Richard Clarke. He had advised, oh, President Reagan and George H.W. Bush on counterterrorism. He was carried over to George W. Bush&#8217;s administration, his counterterrorism czar, and also was with President Clinton. He was shocked when Rumsfeld, the day after, said, &quot;We&#8217;ve got to look at Iraq.&quot; He was shocked when President Bush told him to look at Iraq. One of the things he told CBS&#8217;s 60 Minutes , &quot;I think&quot;—when talking about President Bush, &quot;I think he&#8217;s done a terrible job on the war against terrorism,&quot; because, he said, months before the 9/11 attacks, he had warned the administration: &quot;We&#8217;ve got to look at al-Qaeda.&quot; But to be told the day after the 9/11 attacks, &quot;You must look at Iraq&quot;? And think about it today. One million Iraqis dead.
But the Bush administration didn&#8217;t do it alone. They had a compliant press to amplify their allegations, the falsehoods. And that also has to be looked at. During the years of the Bush administration, where was the press?
&quot;The White House propaganda blitz was launched on September 7, 2002, at a Camp David press conference. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood side by side with ... President George W. Bush. Together, they declared that evidence from a report published by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ) showed that Iraq was &#39;six months away&#39; from building nuclear weapons.&quot;
President Bush said, &quot;I don&#8217;t know what more evidence we need.&quot;
Actually, any evidence would have helped. &quot;There was no such IAEA report. But at the time, few mainstream American journalists questioned the leaders&#8217; outright lies. Instead, the following day, [so-called] &#39;evidence&#39; popped up in the Sunday New York Times under the twin byline of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller. [They wrote,] &#39;More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction ... Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,&#39;&quot;—this according to Bush administration officials, they wrote.
&#8220;In a revealing example of how the story amplified administration spin, the authors included the phrase soon to be repeated by President Bush and all his top officials: &#39;The first sign of a &quot;smoking gun,&quot; [administration officials] argue, may be a mushroom cloud.&#39;
&#8220; Harper&#8217;s publisher John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War , knew what to make of this front-page bombshell. [He wrote,] &#39;In a disgraceful piece of stenography,&#39; he wrote, Gordon and Miller &#39;inflated an administration leak into something resembling imminent Armageddon.&#39;
&#8220;The Bush administration knew just what to do with the story they had fed to Gordon and Miller. The day The Times story ran, Vice President Dick Cheney made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows to advance the administration&#8217;s bogus claims. On NBC&#8217;s Meet the Press , Cheney declared that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium. It didn&#8217;t matter that the IAEA refuted the charge both before and after it was made. But Cheney did not want viewers just to take his word for it. [He said,] &#8217;There&#8217;s a story in The New York Times this morning ... And I want to attribute The Times ,&#8217; he said.
&#8220;This was the classic disinformation two-step: the White House leaks a lie to The Times , the newspaper publishes it as a startling exposé, and then the White House conveniently masquerades behind the credibility of The New York Times .
&quot;&#39;What mattered,&#39; wrote MacArthur, &#39;was the unencumbered rollout of a commercial for war.&#39;&quot;
What matters now is that we had a media in this country that acted as a conveyor belt for the lies. And why does that matter? Is it just an academic exercise? Because the lies took and are taking lives. And that&#8217;s what we have to look at.
But not all in the press were complicit. There were many on the front lines who were trying their hardest to get out the truth, on the ground in Iraq.
Which takes us to the moment the day before the U.S. marines pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. It was April 8, 2003. You had a young reporter who had just joined Al Jazeera in their Cairo—in their Baghdad offices. He went on the roof to set the camera, and he was killed when U.S. helicopters strafed the building. Across the street, Abu Dhabi TV, the hosts were shouting on the air, &quot;Help us!&quot; as they were being strafed. Within a few hours, the Palestine Hotel became a target for the U.S. military. Now, all knew at that time that the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad was where well over a hundred unembedded journalists were staying. And they were working hard. When the Abrams tank set their sights on the hotel and opened fire, they killed two reporters. Taras Protsyuk of Reuters was on his balcony filming what was happening. It was about to be the fall of Baghdad. He was with Reuters. And then there was José Couso on another balcony, also filming, for Telecinco in Spain. Both of them were immediately killed, and many others were wounded on that day. That was April 8th, 2003.
Then you come to the summer. This is the summer of 2003. Mazen Dana, another Reuters videographer, one of their finest, was outside what would later become world-famous—Abu Ghraib. But not yet. He was there with a soundman covering what was happening. They talked to U.S. soldiers. But within minutes, he filmed his own death, as the U.S. soldiers attacked him. The soundman said, &quot;We&#8217;d just been speaking with the soldiers.&quot; Later, a Pentagon spokesperson would say they accidentally, quote, &quot;engaged&quot; a cameraman.
Take this forward to the beginning, January, of 2004. Remember Eason Jordan. He was the head of CNN . Well, he was inadvertantly caught on a microphone at the World Economic Forum saying the U.S. military had targeted a dozen journalists who had been killed in Iraq. There was a great firestorm, and ultimately he resigned, after 23 years at CNN , not wanting CNN to become a target. Journalists targeted in Iraq. And those are the journalists.
Now I want to talk about the whistleblowers, the very brave people who stepped forward—for example, soldiers who were horrified by what they saw. While The New York Times very much paved the way for war, they also published a few very good op-ed pieces, like Jameel Jaffer and Larry Siems&#8217; piece , &quot;Honoring Those Who Said No.&quot; They began, &quot;In January 2004, Spec. Joseph M. Darby, a 24-year-old Army reservist in Iraq, discovered a set of photographs showing other members of his company torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. The discovery anguished him, and he struggled over how to respond. [He recalled later,] &#39;I had the choice between what I knew was morally right, and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn&#39;t have it both ways,&#8217;&quot; he said.
&quot;So he copied the photographs onto a CD, sealed it in an envelope, and delivered the envelope and an anonymous letter to the Army&#8217;s Criminal Investigation Command. Three months later—seven years ago today,&quot; they wrote, &quot;—the photographs were published. Specialist Darby soon found himself the target of death threats, but he had no regrets. Testifying at a pretrial hearing for a fellow soldier, he said that the abuse [quote] &#39;violated everything I personally believed in and all I&#39;d been taught about the rules of war.&#8217;&quot;
Yes, there are many brave people, people on the ground, soldiers, journalists, who did speak out. Sy Hersh, who published those photos in The New Yorker , said—and they were horrific—said, &quot;You actually haven&#8217;t seen the worst of them yet.&quot;
So now let&#8217;s talk about what Mr. Goss and Mr. Negroponte didn&#8217;t talk about: the word &quot;torture.&quot; There is no doubt torture played a major role in the push for invading Iraq. And while the Senate report and other critics say torture produced false information, that could have been one of the program&#8217;s goals.
In 2009, McClatchy reported , &quot;The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and ... Saddam Hussein&#8217;s regime.&quot; A former senior U.S. intelligence official said, quote, &quot;There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney&#8217;s and Rumsfeld&#8217;s people to push harder,&quot; this person said.
The Iraq-torture connection gets only bare mention in the Senate intelligence report, the executive summary which was released in December. But it&#8217;s still significant. In a footnote, the report cites the case of Ibn Shaykh al-Libi. After U.S. forces sent him for torture in Egypt, Libi made up the false claim that Iraq provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda. Secretary of State Colin Powell then used Libi&#8217;s statements in his famous February 5th, 2003, address to the U.N. Security Council, an address he would later call a &quot;stain&quot; on his career, that speech at the U.N. falsely alleging Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Senate report says, quote, &quot;Libi [later] recanted the claim ... claiming that he had been tortured ... and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear.&quot;
Torture—it is so important to talk about this today, what has gone on and who should be held accountable. The Senate intelligence report, the executive order was—the executive summary was released in December, and it covered between 2002 and 2006. Even Senator John McCain—well, a man who himself was tortured in captivity as a POW in Vietnam—called for its release.
Graphic new details of the post-9/11 U.S. torture program came to light in December, when the Senate Intelligence Committee released that 500-page summary of its investigation into the CIA , with key parts redacted. The report concludes that the intelligence agency failed to disrupt a single plot, despite torturing al-Qaeda and other captives in secret prisons worldwide between 2002 and &#8217;06, and details a list of torture methods used on prisoners, including waterboarding, sexual threats with broomsticks, medically unnecessary &quot;rectal feeding.&quot; The report also confirms the CIA ran black sites in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Thailand, and a secret site on the Guantánamo Naval Base known as Strawberry Fields.
So far, no one involved in the CIA interrogation program has been charged with a crime, except for the whistleblower, John Kiriakou, who just came out of two years of prison and is currently under house arrest.
Well, it is so important to assess the Bush administration, and I hope in a few years you&#8217;ll be doing the same for the Obama administration, as you have done in the past. Should President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and CIA officials be tried for torture? That is a very serious question. A human rights group in Berlin has filed a criminal complaint against the architects of the Bush administration&#8217;s torture program—it&#8217;s called the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights—accusing former Bush administration officials, like CIA Director George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld, of war crimes, calling for an immediate investigation by a German prosecutor—the move following the release of the Senate report. But it is not only international law groups that are calling for this. Yes, President Bush&#8217;s own counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, has called for the same.
I want to congratulate Hofstra for holding this assessment of the Bush administration. But I think now it has to go beyond assessment. And this is to a larger audience in this country and around the world. If we really care about national security and being a model for the world of justice, it has to move from assessment to an accounting and to accountability.
PORTER GOSS : In the interests of fairness, would respond a little bit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence study on rendition, detention and interrogation—was a partisan political study. It was not two-sided. And there are further facts that need to come out from those who are able to, I think, correct some of the misstatements in the Senate study. That has not happened yet. I hope it will happen, because I do believe the American public needs to know the truth of all of this. The Senate study is not the full truth.
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
MODERATOR : Could you say again?
PORTER GOSS : What?
AMY GOODMAN : Was there any truth in it?
PORTER GOSS : Of course there was some truth in it. It was a cherry-picked, selective presentation of information to support a narrative that was made before this report actually even was started. The announced purpose of the report, of the study, if I&#8217;m correcting Chairman Feinstein—if I&#8217;m quoting Chairman Feinstein properly, was to make sure this never happens again. I&#8217;m not sure what the &quot;this&quot; was, or neither are a lot of people. But apparently, as you go through the report, as you go through this study, there are a series of observations that involved information that the decision makers could have provided to the people doing the report and would have given a fairer and more complete understanding of what happened and why. If you want to know why something happened, it&#8217;s a good idea to go back to the people who made the decision and ask them. They calculatedly and determinedly avoided going back to anybody that they thought might spoil their narrative. So, consequently, yes, there is some information that is cherry-picked, some out of context and some actually factually correct, as far as I know. I have not read a word of the report. I have not read a word of any of this stuff, because, to me, it is purely partisan political. And a politicization of intelligence in this country is going to hurt only one person, and that&#8217;s every citizen in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN : I just wanted to quote Senator McCain, who—
PORTER GOSS : I love Senator McCain, and I would certainly agree with you that Senator McCain is the icon of prisoner of war conduct. He has suffered greatly for our country and made great sacrifices and deserves to be listened to. But he does not have all of the information either.
AMY GOODMAN : He said, &quot;It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose—to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies—but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.&quot;
PORTER GOSS : He is welcome to his opinion. I doubt he&#8217;s read the report. And in any event, he has certainly not asked the people who were involved in this activity what they think, because they have all indicated that he has not asked them. So, even he is dealing with less than a full deck.
AMY GOODMAN : Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, &quot;If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently,&quot; which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.
PORTER GOSS : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : Look, well, torture is never right. And—
AMY GOODMAN : Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : I say torture is never right. That&#8217;s my first point.
But my second point was, I&#8217;ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn&#8217;t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He&#8217;s the commander-in-chief. He&#8217;s got the constitutional authority, and that&#8217;s what he decided to do.
The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, &quot;It&#8217;s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?&quot; And Blix said, &quot;You know, it&#8217;s—that&#8217;s right.&quot; But he said, &quot;I can&#8217;t—I still don&#8217;t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty.&quot; And maybe that&#8217;s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsThe Costs of War, the Price of Peacehttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/3/26/the_costs_of_war_the_price
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-26:blog/070ee4 Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
What price would you pay not to kill another human being? At what point would you commit the offenses allegedly perpetrated by Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged Wednesday with desertion and “misbehavior before an enemy?”
Bowe Bergdahl was a private when he left his post in Afghanistan, under circumstances that are still unknown to the public, and was captured by the Taliban. They imprisoned him for five years, until he was released in a controversial prisoner swap negotiated by the Obama administration. Five Taliban members who were held for years at Guantánamo Bay were released to house arrest in Qatar in exchange for Bergdahl. He now faces a court-martial and potentially life in prison. Meanwhile, the architects of the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan remain untried, while a new report asserts that up to 1.3 million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the first 10 years of the so-called war on terror.
The report is called “Body Count” and is published in the U.S. by Physicians for Social Responsibility. “It has been politically important to downplay Allied forces’ responsibility for the massive carnage and destruction in the region,” writes San Francisco doctor Robert M. Gould in the report’s foreword. He told me: “We need to take full responsibility for the true cost of war as we are preparing to continue our involvement in Afghanistan and deepen our involvement in Syria and Iraq. There’s great anger throughout the region about our involvement and the underplaying here of what the true costs are in terms of death and destruction.”
This report was released just as Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, was welcomed at the White House by President Barack Obama. Obama announced that he is slowing the planned departure of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, leaving 9,800 soldiers at least through the end of 2015. “It is my judgment, it’s the judgment of General [John] Campbell and others who are on the ground, that providing this additional time frame during this fighting season for us to be able to help the Afghan security forces succeed is well worth it,” Obama said. America’s longest war continues, with no end in sight. Ghani visited the Pentagon during his time in Washington, as well as Arlington National Cemetery, where he laid a wreath of flowers to honor the fallen U.S. soldiers.
Click here to read the full column posted at Truthdig.
Subscribe to Amy Goodman’s podcast on SoundCloud and Stitcher Radio . Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

What price would you pay not to kill another human being? At what point would you commit the offenses allegedly perpetrated by Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged Wednesday with desertion and “misbehavior before an enemy?”

Bowe Bergdahl was a private when he left his post in Afghanistan, under circumstances that are still unknown to the public, and was captured by the Taliban. They imprisoned him for five years, until he was released in a controversial prisoner swap negotiated by the Obama administration. Five Taliban members who were held for years at Guantánamo Bay were released to house arrest in Qatar in exchange for Bergdahl. He now faces a court-martial and potentially life in prison. Meanwhile, the architects of the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan remain untried, while a new report asserts that up to 1.3 million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the first 10 years of the so-called war on terror.

The report is called “Body Count” and is published in the U.S. by Physicians for Social Responsibility. “It has been politically important to downplay Allied forces’ responsibility for the massive carnage and destruction in the region,” writes San Francisco doctor Robert M. Gould in the report’s foreword. He told me: “We need to take full responsibility for the true cost of war as we are preparing to continue our involvement in Afghanistan and deepen our involvement in Syria and Iraq. There’s great anger throughout the region about our involvement and the underplaying here of what the true costs are in terms of death and destruction.”

This report was released just as Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, was welcomed at the White House by President Barack Obama. Obama announced that he is slowing the planned departure of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, leaving 9,800 soldiers at least through the end of 2015. “It is my judgment, it’s the judgment of General [John] Campbell and others who are on the ground, that providing this additional time frame during this fighting season for us to be able to help the Afghan security forces succeed is well worth it,” Obama said. America’s longest war continues, with no end in sight. Ghani visited the Pentagon during his time in Washington, as well as Arlington National Cemetery, where he laid a wreath of flowers to honor the fallen U.S. soldiers.

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Thu, 26 Mar 2015 12:28:00 -0400The Costs of War, the Price of Peace Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
What price would you pay not to kill another human being? At what point would you commit the offenses allegedly perpetrated by Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged Wednesday with desertion and “misbehavior before an enemy?”
Bowe Bergdahl was a private when he left his post in Afghanistan, under circumstances that are still unknown to the public, and was captured by the Taliban. They imprisoned him for five years, until he was released in a controversial prisoner swap negotiated by the Obama administration. Five Taliban members who were held for years at Guantánamo Bay were released to house arrest in Qatar in exchange for Bergdahl. He now faces a court-martial and potentially life in prison. Meanwhile, the architects of the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan remain untried, while a new report asserts that up to 1.3 million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the first 10 years of the so-called war on terror.
The report is called “Body Count” and is published in the U.S. by Physicians for Social Responsibility. “It has been politically important to downplay Allied forces’ responsibility for the massive carnage and destruction in the region,” writes San Francisco doctor Robert M. Gould in the report’s foreword. He told me: “We need to take full responsibility for the true cost of war as we are preparing to continue our involvement in Afghanistan and deepen our involvement in Syria and Iraq. There’s great anger throughout the region about our involvement and the underplaying here of what the true costs are in terms of death and destruction.”
This report was released just as Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, was welcomed at the White House by President Barack Obama. Obama announced that he is slowing the planned departure of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, leaving 9,800 soldiers at least through the end of 2015. “It is my judgment, it’s the judgment of General [John] Campbell and others who are on the ground, that providing this additional time frame during this fighting season for us to be able to help the Afghan security forces succeed is well worth it,” Obama said. America’s longest war continues, with no end in sight. Ghani visited the Pentagon during his time in Washington, as well as Arlington National Cemetery, where he laid a wreath of flowers to honor the fallen U.S. soldiers.
Click here to read the full column posted at Truthdig.
Subscribe to Amy Goodman’s podcast on SoundCloud and Stitcher Radio . nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsEndless War: As U.S. Strikes Tikrit & Delays Afghan Pullout, "War on Terror" Toll Tops 1.3 Millionhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/26/endless_war_as_us_strikes_tikrit
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-26:en/story/7e8d47 AMY GOODMAN : U.S.-led coalition warplanes have begun bombing the Iraqi city of Tikrit in an attempt to seize control of the city from the self-described Islamic State. The assault on Tikrit began three weeks ago when Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Shiite militia launched a ground offensive. The U.S. airstrikes now squarely put Washington and Tehran on the same side in the fight, though the Obama administration insists it&#8217;s not coordinating military operations with Iran. The Pentagon stressed that the airstrikes are aimed to help Iraqi forces defeat the Islamic State, but by all accounts it has been Iranian-backed militias leading the ground attack in Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran&#8217;s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, had been on the ground advising the militias in Tikrit as recently as Sunday.
Meanwhile, in other Iraq news, a new report has found the Iraq War has killed about one million people. The Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other groups examined the toll from the so-called war on terror in three countries—Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The investigators found the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around one million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, a total of about 1.3 million.
We&#8217;re joined now by two guests who worked on the report. Hans von Sponeck is with us, former U.N. assistant secretary-general and U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who in 2000 resigned his post in protest of the U.S.-led sanctions regime. He&#8217;s the author of A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq . Von Sponeck is currently teaching at the University of Marburg in Germany, joining us by Democracy Now! video stream. And Dr. Robert Gould is with us from San Francisco, the president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He wrote the foreword for the new international edition of the report, called &quot;Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the &#39;War on Terror.&#39;&quot;
Dr. Robert Gould, the figures laid out in this report say 1.3 million people have died in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in [Pakistan]. And it says that this could possibly be not an overestimate; it says it&#8217;s the minimum numbers. It could possibly be as high as two million. Can you talk about the significance of what these figures mean?
DR. ROBERT GOULD : Well, these are, as you relate, incredible figures in terms of the total counts, and they compare markedly with those estimates that have come out of organizations such as Iraq Body Count in the past, which use very—what are known as passive methods of detecting casualties in war, because they rely on official reports and morgues and things like that to arrive at their estimates. But obviously those type of methods really lack the ability to determine the full cost of war, given that, particularly in the type of warfare we witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, many of these deaths are really silent, in the sense that people are killed by death squads, they&#8217;re killed by bombing raids, that are really off the records, and we don&#8217;t get to really understand the full impact of the war. That&#8217;s why a number of the people who are incorporated within the new issue of &quot;Body Count,&quot; in terms of looking at the totality of the reports, there&#8217;s a very important examination of what we—of more active methods of sampling. And these are methods that have been used in diverse places such as Sudan, the Congo, for their various horrible war situations, as well. So, what this report really does is bring to us, in its North American release, a really fuller accounting of what the human costs of that war have been, which, you know, just listening to the headlines on the news this morning that you&#8217;ve related, we could still see the impacts of the destabilization that we, our government and allies, have created in Iraq and elsewhere.
AMY GOODMAN : And why the people particularly in the United States do not see anything like these numbers? The significance of what it would mean?
DR. ROBERT GOULD : Well, I think there has been, in a similar way to what our collective experience has been with the reporting in the Vietnam War, a real distancing of the impacts on the people over there. We have certainly accounted for the dead and wounded within—in terms of the numbers of U.S. troops and NATO forces in the various conflicts, but these deaths, this destruction, is, for variety of reasons, very deliberately or through self-censorship, kept from the American people so we don&#8217;t see these real costs. And I would also say we don&#8217;t see the connecting points about how these policies and that degree of death and destruction leads through the destabilization of these regions and the persistent killing that&#8217;s conducted by drone warfare, etc. We&#8217;re insulated from these effects and don&#8217;t understand the anger that arises from people who have been through, now 12 years in Iraq, the act of war, even longer in Afghanistan, what those effects are. And I would think that as a result, people are insulated from what—the milieu within which groups like ISIS arise. And at a time when we&#8217;re contemplating at this point cutting off our removal of troops from Afghanistan and contemplating new military authorization for increasing our operations in Syria and Iraq, this insulation from the real impacts serves our government in being able to continue to conduct these wars in the name of the war on terror, with not only horrendous cost to the people in the region, but we in the United States suffer from what the budgetary costs of unending war are.
AMY GOODMAN : Again, this report , &quot;Body Count,&quot; that 1.3 million figure includes Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani dead; it does not include areas like Yemen.
DR. ROBERT GOULD : Correct.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re also joined by Hans von Sponeck, former U.N. assistant secretary-general and former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who in 2000 resigned his post in protest of the U.S.-led sections regime. Dr. von Sponeck, I thank you for joining us. Can you respond, as a person who&#8217;s been deeply involved in Iraq—as we speak today, the U.S. is leading the bombing of Tikrit, what, 12 years after the U.S. first invaded Iraq—to this report that you have written an introduction for, called &quot;Body Count&quot;?
HANS VON SPONECK : Well, first of all, good morning, Amy. Good to hear you. I&#8217;m sorry we can&#8217;t see each other.
But let me just say that it is, in my experience, not surprising that, ultimately, we see courage coming out of the United States in terms of facing the truth, the facts. Dianne Feinstein has done that in December with the release of the CIA torture report. The Physicians for Social Responsibility, together with IPPNW in other parts of the world, have now released the &quot;Body Count&quot; report, which is, both documents, I think, an incredibly powerful and valuable basis for which to discuss—at long last discuss—the possibility of redress and learning—learning, for example, that all these interactions, whether it was in Iraq or in Afghanistan or in Syria or in Libya, the regime change approach to solving problems of international relations have no future, should not have a future. It&#8217;s so clear now. The &quot;Body Count&quot; report makes it very clear that not only that young men and women in uniform, but also innocent civilians, once again, become victim.
What I very much hope is that the &quot;Body Count&quot; publication will not—will not lead to a futile debate on the accuracy of data. It reminds me of the 2000 release by UNICEF of the child mortality study on Iraq, where the debate that should have taken place about the causes of all that was detoured by a debate on whether Lancet or &quot;Body Count&quot; or any other documentation had the correct figures. I think that&#8217;s totally, in my view, irrelevant. We have enough credible data from different sources, and the &quot;Body Count&quot; publication is an attempt to show the most recent efforts to at least get credible indicators, not the hardcore, empirical facts—not possible. And I think that is the importance of all of this, that we use that as a basis for a long-overdue debate in Washington, in London, and certainly at the United Nations in New York, as to why this all happened and how one can try and prevent this from recurring in the future.
AMY GOODMAN : Your response to the U.S. bombing Tikrit now?
HANS VON SPONECK : Well, it sounds maybe too simple to just say, &quot;Look, what we are seeing now is what we—what the seeds have grown.&quot; Many people will probably disagree strongly in the United States when I say that ISIS is a relative of a Western intervention. ISIS , as it developed, developed after the 19th of March, 2003. Not to acknowledge that, I think, is pursuing an ostrich policy. It was the way an occupation force behaves that created the first seeds of an ISIS . The Sunni belt in central Iraq, that suddenly was faced with an understanding that they had no future, that it was a Shia future, the disbanding of—we know all these things—of the army, of the bureaucracy, all against the Hague Convention, that doesn&#8217;t allow for structural changes by an occupation army—all that led to a reaction. And a lot of reasons why ISIS is today in Tikrit has to do with the fact that very normal Sunnis and other Iraqi citizens felt that they were betrayed, and they started to rise, and they started to support the extreme elements that we now see face to face with militias of Shia origin, with Iranian forces and the Iraqi military, of course, also. So, ISIS in Tikrit goes back to March 2003. That&#8217;s the point I&#8217;m trying to make.
AMY GOODMAN : On Tuesday, I participated in a conference at Hofstra University on Long Island, which was assessing the George W. Bush presidency. I want to turn to a clip of my exchange with John Negroponte, a man that you know well. He was the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the former director of national intelligence.
AMY GOODMAN : Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, &quot;If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently,&quot; which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.
PORTER GOSS : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : Look, well, torture is never right. And—
AMY GOODMAN : Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?
JOHN NEGROPONTE : I say torture is never right. That&#8217;s my first point.
But my second point was, I&#8217;ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn&#8217;t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He&#8217;s the commander-in-chief. He&#8217;s got the constitutional authority, and that&#8217;s what he decided to do.
The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, &quot;It&#8217;s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?&quot; And Blix said, &quot;You know, it&#8217;s—that&#8217;s right.&quot; But he said, &quot;I can&#8217;t—I still don&#8217;t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty.&quot; And maybe that&#8217;s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged.
AMY GOODMAN : Hans von Sponeck, if you could respond to what the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the former head of national intelligence, John Negroponte, said at this session? You are the former U.N. assistant secretary-general and former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq.
HANS VON SPONECK : Well, you know, Ambassador Negroponte was a well-known figure in my days in Baghdad, and I know where he&#8217;s coming from. What he has to say about the perception or the question why Saddam Hussein didn&#8217;t disclose that he had no weapons of mass destruction, I think that speculation surprises me. I think any political analyst should have really understood very quickly, if he or she knew the constellation in the Middle East, the war of eight years between Iraq and Iran. Saddam Hussein, as a self-appointed leader of the region, didn&#8217;t want to show that he was weak, that he had an army that would have no chance against any neighbor because of the poor equipment and whatever. So he didn&#8217;t want. It was a question of cultural response and shame, shame. He was ashamed to admit that he was really nobody&#8217;s—nobody&#8217;s foe. Nobody could take him seriously. So that is one reason why I think Saddam Hussein acted the way he did.
This business, the statement, torture is never right—every single page of the 200 pages that I have read as of today of the CIA torture report released by the U.S. Senate, every page is an admission of confusion, a lack of cooperation among the CIA , the FBI , the Department of State, other—the legal authorities. And that made it possible, that horrific violation of U.S. national as well as international law—Geneva Convention, Hague Convention—all these documents that say the right things were violated by the most unbelievable cruelty of these—yeah, these adopted extended interrogation techniques, performed, and the suffering that resulted from that.
And there is only one thing, Amy, that I feel is missing. It took a lot of courage for the release of that report. That has to be acknowledged. And I hope that people, countries around the world do so. But there&#8217;s a word missing. In these 500 pages that are released, there should somewhere a reference to accountability. Impunity cannot possibly be an answer in dealing with what we are reading in that document. So, I&#8217;d hope that Mr. Negroponte would go a little bit beyond just saying torture is never right. Well, that was known at the time when he was the head of the intelligence community, and what was done about it?
AMY GOODMAN : And Ambassador Negroponte saying he felt that the U.S. moved into war too quickly in Iraq, that he wanted the inspections to continue, did that ring true for you from your experience of him in Iraq, though he came a bit later, after the war began?
HANS VON SPONECK : If I understood you correctly here, I think it is very clear, from what my colleague Hans Blix pleaded for—and that is, &quot;Give me three more months, and I will then conclusively be able to tell you that Iraq is quantitatively disarmed&quot;—qualitatively, Iraq was, anyway—that was known in the intelligence community—no longer a threat to anybody. But he wanted to go that last step, that would have shown that disarmament, as arms inspectors have said ever since 1995, had really progressed to the point where one could declare Iraq, from the perspective of weapons of mass destruction, as disarmed. But that opportunity wasn&#8217;t given to him.
AMY GOODMAN : Hans von Sponeck, I know you to leave for a funeral, but I wanted to ask you one last question. You, together with another former U.N. assistant secretary-general, Denis Halliday, have been working on this issue of accountability. Can you explain what you&#8217;ve been doing?
HANS VON SPONECK : Well, if I have a moment, then let me just say that Denis Halliday and I, first of all, we are in weekly contact with each other to compare notes and synchronize our approaches. We both are three—or, two out of three commissioners of a war crimes tribunal that was established by the former prime minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir, in 2005. We have been trying hard to prepare very seriously collected evidence of torture performed at different levels in Iraq during the years of occupation. We interviewed—the famous picture of the man in the hood that went around the world, we interviewed this man in the hood in Kuala Lumpur. We talked to many of the torture victims from Abu Ghraib, from Bagram, from Guantánamo. So, this overwhelming body of evidence was published in two volumes that were sent in 2012 to the International Criminal Court. And the sobering response from there was, &quot;Sorry, we are not responsible for a case like that.&quot; Well, parties have changed. There is a new chief prosecutor in The Hague. And we are now—in mid-April, on the 18th of April, in fact, the War Crimes Commission will meet yet again in Kuala Lumpur to prepare for the second, and hopefully last, draft submission of this documentation to the International Criminal Court.
I should also like to add that last June I personally handed, in the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the U.K., these volumes of evidence, in the hope that this would generate the discussion about these issues in the British political circles. That hasn&#8217;t happened. But we are not going to give up. We are not blind or hateful even—that would be terrible—extremists in our demands, but we insist that impunity cannot be the answer. And we are very much, Amy, encouraged by these moments of light, like the publication of the CIA torture report, by the fact that the professional medical community in the United States, the Physicians for Social Responsibility, had the courage to go along in publishing this document now. So, more and more parties are coming together, and I hope that it will lead to that which, if nothing else, we owe to also the Iraqi people, to gain their dignity back, to recognize—for them to recognize that the world doesn&#8217;t accept what has happened, and the courts, hopefully, in the United States and in the U.K. will start the proceedings.
AMY GOODMAN : Hans von Sponeck, I want to thank you very much for being with us, former U.N. assistant secretary-general, former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who in 2000 resigned his post in protest of the U.S.-led sanctions regime, author of A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq . And I want to thank Dr. Robert Gould, president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He wrote the foreword for the new international edition of the group&#8217;s report , &quot;Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the &#39;War on Terror.&#39;&quot; Hans von Sponeck was joining us from near Freiburg, Germany, where he lives. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . We&#8217;ll be back in a minute. AMYGOODMAN: U.S.-led coalition warplanes have begun bombing the Iraqi city of Tikrit in an attempt to seize control of the city from the self-described Islamic State. The assault on Tikrit began three weeks ago when Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Shiite militia launched a ground offensive. The U.S. airstrikes now squarely put Washington and Tehran on the same side in the fight, though the Obama administration insists it’s not coordinating military operations with Iran. The Pentagon stressed that the airstrikes are aimed to help Iraqi forces defeat the Islamic State, but by all accounts it has been Iranian-backed militias leading the ground attack in Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, had been on the ground advising the militias in Tikrit as recently as Sunday.

Meanwhile, in other Iraq news, a new report has found the Iraq War has killed about one million people. The Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other groups examined the toll from the so-called war on terror in three countries—Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The investigators found the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around one million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, a total of about 1.3 million.

We’re joined now by two guests who worked on the report. Hans von Sponeck is with us, former U.N. assistant secretary-general and U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who in 2000 resigned his post in protest of the U.S.-led sanctions regime. He’s the author of A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq. Von Sponeck is currently teaching at the University of Marburg in Germany, joining us by Democracy Now! video stream. And Dr. Robert Gould is with us from San Francisco, the president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He wrote the foreword for the new international edition of the report, called "Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the 'War on Terror.'"

Dr. Robert Gould, the figures laid out in this report say 1.3 million people have died in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in [Pakistan]. And it says that this could possibly be not an overestimate; it says it’s the minimum numbers. It could possibly be as high as two million. Can you talk about the significance of what these figures mean?

DR. ROBERTGOULD: Well, these are, as you relate, incredible figures in terms of the total counts, and they compare markedly with those estimates that have come out of organizations such as Iraq Body Count in the past, which use very—what are known as passive methods of detecting casualties in war, because they rely on official reports and morgues and things like that to arrive at their estimates. But obviously those type of methods really lack the ability to determine the full cost of war, given that, particularly in the type of warfare we witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, many of these deaths are really silent, in the sense that people are killed by death squads, they’re killed by bombing raids, that are really off the records, and we don’t get to really understand the full impact of the war. That’s why a number of the people who are incorporated within the new issue of "Body Count," in terms of looking at the totality of the reports, there’s a very important examination of what we—of more active methods of sampling. And these are methods that have been used in diverse places such as Sudan, the Congo, for their various horrible war situations, as well. So, what this report really does is bring to us, in its North American release, a really fuller accounting of what the human costs of that war have been, which, you know, just listening to the headlines on the news this morning that you’ve related, we could still see the impacts of the destabilization that we, our government and allies, have created in Iraq and elsewhere.

AMYGOODMAN: And why the people particularly in the United States do not see anything like these numbers? The significance of what it would mean?

DR. ROBERTGOULD: Well, I think there has been, in a similar way to what our collective experience has been with the reporting in the Vietnam War, a real distancing of the impacts on the people over there. We have certainly accounted for the dead and wounded within—in terms of the numbers of U.S. troops and NATO forces in the various conflicts, but these deaths, this destruction, is, for variety of reasons, very deliberately or through self-censorship, kept from the American people so we don’t see these real costs. And I would also say we don’t see the connecting points about how these policies and that degree of death and destruction leads through the destabilization of these regions and the persistent killing that’s conducted by drone warfare, etc. We’re insulated from these effects and don’t understand the anger that arises from people who have been through, now 12 years in Iraq, the act of war, even longer in Afghanistan, what those effects are. And I would think that as a result, people are insulated from what—the milieu within which groups like ISIS arise. And at a time when we’re contemplating at this point cutting off our removal of troops from Afghanistan and contemplating new military authorization for increasing our operations in Syria and Iraq, this insulation from the real impacts serves our government in being able to continue to conduct these wars in the name of the war on terror, with not only horrendous cost to the people in the region, but we in the United States suffer from what the budgetary costs of unending war are.

AMYGOODMAN: Again, this report, "Body Count," that 1.3 million figure includes Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani dead; it does not include areas like Yemen.

DR. ROBERTGOULD: Correct.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re also joined by Hans von Sponeck, former U.N. assistant secretary-general and former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who in 2000 resigned his post in protest of the U.S.-led sections regime. Dr. von Sponeck, I thank you for joining us. Can you respond, as a person who’s been deeply involved in Iraq—as we speak today, the U.S. is leading the bombing of Tikrit, what, 12 years after the U.S. first invaded Iraq—to this report that you have written an introduction for, called "Body Count"?

HANSVONSPONECK: Well, first of all, good morning, Amy. Good to hear you. I’m sorry we can’t see each other.

But let me just say that it is, in my experience, not surprising that, ultimately, we see courage coming out of the United States in terms of facing the truth, the facts. Dianne Feinstein has done that in December with the release of the CIA torture report. The Physicians for Social Responsibility, together with IPPNW in other parts of the world, have now released the "Body Count" report, which is, both documents, I think, an incredibly powerful and valuable basis for which to discuss—at long last discuss—the possibility of redress and learning—learning, for example, that all these interactions, whether it was in Iraq or in Afghanistan or in Syria or in Libya, the regime change approach to solving problems of international relations have no future, should not have a future. It’s so clear now. The "Body Count" report makes it very clear that not only that young men and women in uniform, but also innocent civilians, once again, become victim.

What I very much hope is that the "Body Count" publication will not—will not lead to a futile debate on the accuracy of data. It reminds me of the 2000 release by UNICEF of the child mortality study on Iraq, where the debate that should have taken place about the causes of all that was detoured by a debate on whether Lancet or "Body Count" or any other documentation had the correct figures. I think that’s totally, in my view, irrelevant. We have enough credible data from different sources, and the "Body Count" publication is an attempt to show the most recent efforts to at least get credible indicators, not the hardcore, empirical facts—not possible. And I think that is the importance of all of this, that we use that as a basis for a long-overdue debate in Washington, in London, and certainly at the United Nations in New York, as to why this all happened and how one can try and prevent this from recurring in the future.

AMYGOODMAN: Your response to the U.S. bombing Tikrit now?

HANSVONSPONECK: Well, it sounds maybe too simple to just say, "Look, what we are seeing now is what we—what the seeds have grown." Many people will probably disagree strongly in the United States when I say that ISIS is a relative of a Western intervention. ISIS, as it developed, developed after the 19th of March, 2003. Not to acknowledge that, I think, is pursuing an ostrich policy. It was the way an occupation force behaves that created the first seeds of an ISIS. The Sunni belt in central Iraq, that suddenly was faced with an understanding that they had no future, that it was a Shia future, the disbanding of—we know all these things—of the army, of the bureaucracy, all against the Hague Convention, that doesn’t allow for structural changes by an occupation army—all that led to a reaction. And a lot of reasons why ISIS is today in Tikrit has to do with the fact that very normal Sunnis and other Iraqi citizens felt that they were betrayed, and they started to rise, and they started to support the extreme elements that we now see face to face with militias of Shia origin, with Iranian forces and the Iraqi military, of course, also. So, ISIS in Tikrit goes back to March 2003. That’s the point I’m trying to make.

AMYGOODMAN: On Tuesday, I participated in a conference at Hofstra University on Long Island, which was assessing the George W. Bush presidency. I want to turn to a clip of my exchange with John Negroponte, a man that you know well. He was the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the former director of national intelligence.

AMYGOODMAN: Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, "If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently," which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.

PORTERGOSS: Thank you.

AMYGOODMAN: Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?

JOHNNEGROPONTE: Look, well, torture is never right. And—

AMYGOODMAN: Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?

JOHNNEGROPONTE: I say torture is never right. That’s my first point.

But my second point was, I’ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn’t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He’s the commander-in-chief. He’s got the constitutional authority, and that’s what he decided to do.

The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, "It’s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?" And Blix said, "You know, it’s—that’s right." But he said, "I can’t—I still don’t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty." And maybe that’s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged.

AMYGOODMAN: Hans von Sponeck, if you could respond to what the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the former head of national intelligence, John Negroponte, said at this session? You are the former U.N. assistant secretary-general and former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq.

HANSVONSPONECK: Well, you know, Ambassador Negroponte was a well-known figure in my days in Baghdad, and I know where he’s coming from. What he has to say about the perception or the question why Saddam Hussein didn’t disclose that he had no weapons of mass destruction, I think that speculation surprises me. I think any political analyst should have really understood very quickly, if he or she knew the constellation in the Middle East, the war of eight years between Iraq and Iran. Saddam Hussein, as a self-appointed leader of the region, didn’t want to show that he was weak, that he had an army that would have no chance against any neighbor because of the poor equipment and whatever. So he didn’t want. It was a question of cultural response and shame, shame. He was ashamed to admit that he was really nobody’s—nobody’s foe. Nobody could take him seriously. So that is one reason why I think Saddam Hussein acted the way he did.

This business, the statement, torture is never right—every single page of the 200 pages that I have read as of today of the CIA torture report released by the U.S. Senate, every page is an admission of confusion, a lack of cooperation among the CIA, the FBI, the Department of State, other—the legal authorities. And that made it possible, that horrific violation of U.S. national as well as international law—Geneva Convention, Hague Convention—all these documents that say the right things were violated by the most unbelievable cruelty of these—yeah, these adopted extended interrogation techniques, performed, and the suffering that resulted from that.

And there is only one thing, Amy, that I feel is missing. It took a lot of courage for the release of that report. That has to be acknowledged. And I hope that people, countries around the world do so. But there’s a word missing. In these 500 pages that are released, there should somewhere a reference to accountability. Impunity cannot possibly be an answer in dealing with what we are reading in that document. So, I’d hope that Mr. Negroponte would go a little bit beyond just saying torture is never right. Well, that was known at the time when he was the head of the intelligence community, and what was done about it?

AMYGOODMAN: And Ambassador Negroponte saying he felt that the U.S. moved into war too quickly in Iraq, that he wanted the inspections to continue, did that ring true for you from your experience of him in Iraq, though he came a bit later, after the war began?

HANSVONSPONECK: If I understood you correctly here, I think it is very clear, from what my colleague Hans Blix pleaded for—and that is, "Give me three more months, and I will then conclusively be able to tell you that Iraq is quantitatively disarmed"—qualitatively, Iraq was, anyway—that was known in the intelligence community—no longer a threat to anybody. But he wanted to go that last step, that would have shown that disarmament, as arms inspectors have said ever since 1995, had really progressed to the point where one could declare Iraq, from the perspective of weapons of mass destruction, as disarmed. But that opportunity wasn’t given to him.

AMYGOODMAN: Hans von Sponeck, I know you to leave for a funeral, but I wanted to ask you one last question. You, together with another former U.N. assistant secretary-general, Denis Halliday, have been working on this issue of accountability. Can you explain what you’ve been doing?

HANSVONSPONECK: Well, if I have a moment, then let me just say that Denis Halliday and I, first of all, we are in weekly contact with each other to compare notes and synchronize our approaches. We both are three—or, two out of three commissioners of a war crimes tribunal that was established by the former prime minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir, in 2005. We have been trying hard to prepare very seriously collected evidence of torture performed at different levels in Iraq during the years of occupation. We interviewed—the famous picture of the man in the hood that went around the world, we interviewed this man in the hood in Kuala Lumpur. We talked to many of the torture victims from Abu Ghraib, from Bagram, from Guantánamo. So, this overwhelming body of evidence was published in two volumes that were sent in 2012 to the International Criminal Court. And the sobering response from there was, "Sorry, we are not responsible for a case like that." Well, parties have changed. There is a new chief prosecutor in The Hague. And we are now—in mid-April, on the 18th of April, in fact, the War Crimes Commission will meet yet again in Kuala Lumpur to prepare for the second, and hopefully last, draft submission of this documentation to the International Criminal Court.

I should also like to add that last June I personally handed, in the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the U.K., these volumes of evidence, in the hope that this would generate the discussion about these issues in the British political circles. That hasn’t happened. But we are not going to give up. We are not blind or hateful even—that would be terrible—extremists in our demands, but we insist that impunity cannot be the answer. And we are very much, Amy, encouraged by these moments of light, like the publication of the CIA torture report, by the fact that the professional medical community in the United States, the Physicians for Social Responsibility, had the courage to go along in publishing this document now. So, more and more parties are coming together, and I hope that it will lead to that which, if nothing else, we owe to also the Iraqi people, to gain their dignity back, to recognize—for them to recognize that the world doesn’t accept what has happened, and the courts, hopefully, in the United States and in the U.K. will start the proceedings.

AMYGOODMAN: Hans von Sponeck, I want to thank you very much for being with us, former U.N. assistant secretary-general, former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who in 2000 resigned his post in protest of the U.S.-led sanctions regime, author of A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq. And I want to thank Dr. Robert Gould, president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He wrote the foreword for the new international edition of the group’s report, "Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the 'War on Terror.'" Hans von Sponeck was joining us from near Freiburg, Germany, where he lives. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’ll be back in a minute.

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Thu, 26 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0400After Liberation Came Destruction: Iraqi Shiite Militias Accused of Looting, Burning Sunni Villageshttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/24/after_liberation_came_destruction_iraqi_shiite
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-24:en/story/c2dc53 AARON MATÉ: We turn now to Iraq, where the battle for Tikrit has entered its fourth week. Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Shiite militias have fought the Islamic State since early March, trying to retake Saddam Hussein&#8217;s hometown. The Iraqi government is expected to soon request U.S. assistance in the form of airstrikes. If the U.S. accepts, it would mark the biggest collaboration to date between Shiite militias and the U.S. in the fight against the Islamic State.
AMY GOODMAN : This comes at a time when Shiite militias are being accused of carrying out widespread sectarian abuses targeting Sunni civilians. Last week, Human Rights Watch published a report titled &quot;After Liberation Came Destruction: Iraqi Militias and the Aftermath of Amerli.&quot; In a moment, we&#8217;ll be joined by the report&#8217;s co-author, but first we want to bring you this short piece produced by Human Rights Watch.
NARRATOR : Witnesses say that pro-government militias, volunteer fighters and Iraqi security forces carried out a campaign of destruction in the aftermath of operations to drive the extremist group ISIS away from the town of Amerli in Iraq.
IRAQI WOMAN : [translated] At first, we were afraid of ISIS . When ISIS came, we didn&#8217;t escape. They were all around us, so where could we go? Then we were hit by heavy airstrikes. Everyone stayed in their homes. Then the militia came and started firing at us. When they attacked us, we fled to the mountains.
NARRATOR : Last June, ISIS laid siege the mostly Shia town of Amerli for nearly three months. Thousands of people were trapped until U.S.-backed Iraqi forces drove ISIS fighters out with airstrikes and ground operations by an alliance of Shia militias and Iraqi and Kurdish government forces. Witnesses told us that on September 1st, the day after the siege was broken, Shia militias returned to the Sunni villages around Amerli and began looting, burning and destroying homes and businesses.
IRAQI MAN 1: [translated] From what I saw, they used fire [to burn houses], but we also heard explosions. We thought it was bombs that ISIS had left behind, but about 10 days ago, when we snuck back in, we saw that houses had been blow up with explosives. The walls were gone, and the ceilings were collapsing.
PESHMERGA OFFICER : Amerli, behind the electric poles.
TIRANA HASSAN : Amerli is just behind these electric—how many kilometers?
NARRATOR : In mid-October, we visited some of the villages on the outskirts of Amerli. Our escorts were Kurdish military forces known as peshmerga.
PESHMERGA OFFICER : [translated] The Shia militias destroyed all of these shops. This restaurant used to be owned by a Kurd. That one belonged to a Sunni Arab. They came to the area after the airstrikes. The houses and shops were untouched during the airstrikes, but when the militias came, they were destroyed. When we came back, we saw militia flags with the words &quot;Ya Hussein&quot; and &quot;Ya Ali.&quot;
NARRATOR : As we headed towards the village of Yengija, we saw the yellow flags of the pro-government militia, Saraya al-Khorasani. They still controlled the area at the time of our field investigation in mid-October. Once inside the village, we saw homes still burning. It was nearly seven weeks after the siege of Amerli was broken. Other homes and buildings showed signs of arson. Black soot marked the windows and doors where flames had engulfed the interior and charred the outer walls. On many of the houses, militias spray-painted sectarian slogans and the names of their group. We analyzed satellite imagery recorded over Yengija and found evidence of a systematic and sustained campaign of arson and demolition that lasted over two months after the end of the siege of Amerli. We also analyzed a 500-kilometer square radius of Amerli, which confirmed destruction in 30 out of 35 villages. Most of the damage was caused by arson and intentional demolition inflicted after ISIS had fled the area.
IRAQI MAN 2: [translated] Those 20 families, living over there, all fled Suleiman Bek when the militia came.
NARRATOR : Iraq clearly faces serious threats in its conflict with ISIS . But the abuses committed by the forces fighting ISIS are threatening the country in the long term. Iraqis are caught between the horrors ISIS commits and the abuses by militias, and civilians are paying the price.
AMY GOODMAN : That video produced by Human Rights Watch. When we come back, we&#8217;ll be joined by Erin Evers, Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch. She co-wrote the new report , &quot;After Liberation Came Destruction: Iraqi Militias and the Aftermath of Amerli.&quot; She has been on the ground in Iraq with Human Rights Watch since September 2012. We&#8217;ll also speak with journalist Matthieu Aikins. His latest piece for Rolling Stone is headlined &quot;Inside Baghdad&#8217;s Brutal Battle Against ISIS .&quot; This is Democracy Now! We&#8217;ll be back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : Mohammed Saleh, here on Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté.
AARON MATÉ: So, Erin, thank you for joining us. As we talk about your report on the rise of militias in Iraq, we&#8217;re joined by Erin Evers, Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch. She co-wrote the new report , &quot;After Liberation Came Destruction: Iraqi Militias and the Aftermath of Amerli,&quot; on the ground in Iraq with HRW since September 2012. Also joined by Matt Aikins, award-winning foreign correspondent. His latest piece for Rolling Stone is &quot;Inside Baghdad&#8217;s Brutal Battle Against ISIS .&quot; He joins us by video stream from Karachi, Pakistan.
Erin Evers, thank you for joining us, as I said. Talk about what you found in Iraq.
ERIN EVERS : Well, we essentially documented that after U.S. coalition strikes in the town of Amerli, in Salahuddin province, routed ISIS from the town of Amerli, along with—along with militias and security forces fighting on the ground—
AMY GOODMAN : And describe where Amerli is.
ERIN EVERS : Amerli is in Salahuddin, which is north of Baghdad. It&#8217;s the same province that Tikrit is in. And the town itself is kind of the northeast of the province. So, ISIS had been laying siege to this town for two months. The ground forces alone were unable to route ISIS from the town, but then, after the U.S. airstrikes on August 31st, they cleared ISIS from the town, then proceeded to spread out throughout Salahuddin province and neighboring Kirkuk province, and attacked the Sunni villages in those provinces. So they essentially laid siege to all of the Sunni villages in a pretty broad area, set homes on fire, looted them, in some cases destroyed them with explosives and earth-moving equipment.
We used satellite imagery. We were on the ground, obviously, and saw some of the destruction with our own eyes, spoke to about 30 persons who were displaced as a result of—as a result of this clearing operation. And then we used satellite imagery in order to determine that the damage that we saw was in fact caused by militias and not in the course of fighting or by ISIS . So we had determined the timeline, essentially, of when what we saw happened, so that we could be clear that those areas were under the control of militias and not under the control of ISIS or not, you know—not engaging in battle at the time.
AMY GOODMAN : Why are the militias doing this? And what is their relationship to the Iraqi army?
ERIN EVERS : So, the militias are not under any formal chain of command. They are leading the fight against ISIS , and they are responsible, essentially, to themselves.
Why they&#8217;re doing this, I think, is really anybody&#8217;s guess. But from statements that—you know, statements that we&#8217;ve heard from militia leaders and from what people on the ground have told us that militia—you know, militia fighters were saying to them when they were on the ground, it seems like they were essentially trying to clear the area of Sunnis.
And after this campaign, several months afterwards, in January, the same militias went through Diyala province, which is a province neighboring Iran, and essentially carried out the same kinds of operations, except at an even more extreme kind of level. So, whereas in this report we documented militias kidnapping people and torturing people, in Diyala we documented the same militias carrying out summary executions of Sunni civilians and even a large massacre of 72 civilians in one town in Diyala in the course of their fighting.
AARON MATÉ: Is there any evidence they&#8217;ve been doing this with U.S. weapons?
ERIN EVERS : We&#8217;ve seen them with U.S. weapons. We don&#8217;t know exactly how they&#8217;ve gotten their hands on these weapons, you know, so there&#8217;s a lot of speculation as to how they&#8217;re getting the weapons. Some people say that they&#8217;re getting them through the Iraqi army, which is the official recipient of the weapons. And other people—you know, other people are saying that they&#8217;re getting them from ISIS , which obviously is also getting the weapons in the course of their fight on the ground.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to read to you a quote from the former CIA director, David Petraeus, former—he&#8217;s also a general. He told The Washington Post , quote, &quot;I would argue that the foremost threat to Iraq&#8217;s long-term stability and the broader regional equilibrium is not the Islamic State; rather, it is Shiite militias, many backed by—and some guided by—Iran,&quot; Petraeus said. He went on to say, quote, &quot;Longer term, Iranian-backed Shia militia could emerge as the preeminent power in the country, one that is outside the control of the government and instead answerable to Tehran.&quot; Your response to this, Erin?
ERIN EVERS : I think, unfortunately, that that&#8217;s a correct evaluation of where Iraq is headed. So even though, you know, in Iraq right now we have a new government with a reformist prime minister, and his allies are also, you know, definitely keen to rein in these militias, to undo some of the kind of very abusive legislation and practices that the former prime minister put in place, unfortunately, the power on the ground that is the strongest right now is the militias, and they are not answerable to the government. There is no accountability for any of the abuses that we&#8217;ve documented on the part of militias. And this is going back even before—you know, even before Mosul fell, the militias were gaining power within the security forces. Once Mosul fell, that relationship flipped, and the militias became the leading force on the ground, and the security forces are kind of following behind.
AARON MATÉ: On the issue of U.S. weapons, there are arms control laws. What has been the White House response about these atrocities potentially enabled with U.S. weaponry?
ERIN EVERS : The White House has not specifically addressed the issue of militias getting their hands on U.S. weaponry. But they have, in recent weeks, kind of ratcheted up their language. They&#8217;re voicing concern about militia abuses, about the possibility of militias being sectarian—which obviously is a foregone conclusion. So, I think that it&#8217;s something that the U.S. is seriously considering. But they haven&#8217;t—they haven&#8217;t publicly addressed specifically the issue of militias getting their hands on weapons.
AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to ask you about the Iraqi security forces. A report by ABC News revealed U.S.-trained and -armed Iraqi military units are under investigation for committing war crimes. This is an except of ABC&#8217;s report by Brian Ross.
BRIAN ROSS : Innocent civilians massacred, prisoners tortured, acts that shock the civilized world—all discovered by ABC News online, not from the usual ISIS accounts, but on social media sites connected to elite units of the Iraqi army, the very forces the U.S. is counting on to help stop such atrocities.
Here, a group of men in Iraqi army uniforms give a sign of approval after a civilian is beheaded behind them. In this video, a young boy, a suspected ISIS recruit, is about to be executed, shot dead in the street with men in what appear to be Iraqi uniforms crowding around the scene. This appears to be an insignia of the Iraqi special forces. There are dozens of such videos and still images now being investigated by U.S. and Iraqi authorities to determine if they are in fact part of the Iraqi army, like these men with a severed head or these men dragging the body of a captured prisoner. In this video, what appears to be two unarmed Iraqi civilians are about to be murdered, like the others already dead next to them. This video, slowed down, shows militia fighters with U.S.-supplied weapons.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s an excerpt of an ABC report by Brian Ross. Erin Evers, you reviewed all of this footage for them?
ERIN EVERS : Yes, I did. You know, the sad thing about all this footage is that it&#8217;s essentially visual documentation of abuses that we, other organizations and the media have been documenting for years on the part of Iraqi security forces, and that successive U.S. and Iraqi governments have turned a blind eye to. So, the kinds of abuses that we saw in that report, these atrocious—you know, absolutely atrocious acts of no accountability whatsoever, is something that the U.S. government has known about for a long time and just failed to do anything about.
AMY GOODMAN : What&#8217;s their response to you, Human Rights Watch?
ERIN EVERS : You know, their response to the report was that they have actually withheld aid from specific groups who they knew were committing these abuses before. That&#8217;s the first time that I ever heard about the U.S. actually withholding aid from abusive groups. That&#8217;s, of course, their obligation under the Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. from providing weapons to human rights-abusing forces. But they have never responded directly to us in terms of the allegations, you know, the kind of documentation that we&#8217;ve done of these kinds of abuses by Iraqi security forces. AARON MATÉ: We turn now to Iraq, where the battle for Tikrit has entered its fourth week. Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Shiite militias have fought the Islamic State since early March, trying to retake Saddam Hussein’s hometown. The Iraqi government is expected to soon request U.S. assistance in the form of airstrikes. If the U.S. accepts, it would mark the biggest collaboration to date between Shiite militias and the U.S. in the fight against the Islamic State.

AMYGOODMAN: This comes at a time when Shiite militias are being accused of carrying out widespread sectarian abuses targeting Sunni civilians. Last week, Human Rights Watch published a report titled "After Liberation Came Destruction: Iraqi Militias and the Aftermath of Amerli." In a moment, we’ll be joined by the report’s co-author, but first we want to bring you this short piece produced by Human Rights Watch.

NARRATOR: Witnesses say that pro-government militias, volunteer fighters and Iraqi security forces carried out a campaign of destruction in the aftermath of operations to drive the extremist group ISIS away from the town of Amerli in Iraq.

IRAQIWOMAN: [translated] At first, we were afraid of ISIS. When ISIS came, we didn’t escape. They were all around us, so where could we go? Then we were hit by heavy airstrikes. Everyone stayed in their homes. Then the militia came and started firing at us. When they attacked us, we fled to the mountains.

NARRATOR: Last June, ISIS laid siege the mostly Shia town of Amerli for nearly three months. Thousands of people were trapped until U.S.-backed Iraqi forces drove ISIS fighters out with airstrikes and ground operations by an alliance of Shia militias and Iraqi and Kurdish government forces. Witnesses told us that on September 1st, the day after the siege was broken, Shia militias returned to the Sunni villages around Amerli and began looting, burning and destroying homes and businesses.

IRAQIMAN 1: [translated] From what I saw, they used fire [to burn houses], but we also heard explosions. We thought it was bombs that ISIS had left behind, but about 10 days ago, when we snuck back in, we saw that houses had been blow up with explosives. The walls were gone, and the ceilings were collapsing.

PESHMERGAOFFICER: Amerli, behind the electric poles.

TIRANAHASSAN: Amerli is just behind these electric—how many kilometers?

NARRATOR: In mid-October, we visited some of the villages on the outskirts of Amerli. Our escorts were Kurdish military forces known as peshmerga.

PESHMERGAOFFICER: [translated] The Shia militias destroyed all of these shops. This restaurant used to be owned by a Kurd. That one belonged to a Sunni Arab. They came to the area after the airstrikes. The houses and shops were untouched during the airstrikes, but when the militias came, they were destroyed. When we came back, we saw militia flags with the words "Ya Hussein" and "Ya Ali."

NARRATOR: As we headed towards the village of Yengija, we saw the yellow flags of the pro-government militia, Saraya al-Khorasani. They still controlled the area at the time of our field investigation in mid-October. Once inside the village, we saw homes still burning. It was nearly seven weeks after the siege of Amerli was broken. Other homes and buildings showed signs of arson. Black soot marked the windows and doors where flames had engulfed the interior and charred the outer walls. On many of the houses, militias spray-painted sectarian slogans and the names of their group. We analyzed satellite imagery recorded over Yengija and found evidence of a systematic and sustained campaign of arson and demolition that lasted over two months after the end of the siege of Amerli. We also analyzed a 500-kilometer square radius of Amerli, which confirmed destruction in 30 out of 35 villages. Most of the damage was caused by arson and intentional demolition inflicted after ISIS had fled the area.

IRAQIMAN 2: [translated] Those 20 families, living over there, all fled Suleiman Bek when the militia came.

NARRATOR: Iraq clearly faces serious threats in its conflict with ISIS. But the abuses committed by the forces fighting ISIS are threatening the country in the long term. Iraqis are caught between the horrors ISIS commits and the abuses by militias, and civilians are paying the price.

AMYGOODMAN: That video produced by Human Rights Watch. When we come back, we’ll be joined by Erin Evers, Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch. She co-wrote the new report, "After Liberation Came Destruction: Iraqi Militias and the Aftermath of Amerli." She has been on the ground in Iraq with Human Rights Watch since September 2012. We’ll also speak with journalist Matthieu Aikins. His latest piece for Rolling Stone is headlined "Inside Baghdad’s Brutal Battle Against ISIS." This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.

AARON MATÉ: So, Erin, thank you for joining us. As we talk about your report on the rise of militias in Iraq, we’re joined by Erin Evers, Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch. She co-wrote the new report, "After Liberation Came Destruction: Iraqi Militias and the Aftermath of Amerli," on the ground in Iraq with HRW since September 2012. Also joined by Matt Aikins, award-winning foreign correspondent. His latest piece for Rolling Stone is "Inside Baghdad’s Brutal Battle Against ISIS." He joins us by video stream from Karachi, Pakistan.

Erin Evers, thank you for joining us, as I said. Talk about what you found in Iraq.

ERINEVERS: Well, we essentially documented that after U.S. coalition strikes in the town of Amerli, in Salahuddin province, routed ISIS from the town of Amerli, along with—along with militias and security forces fighting on the ground—

AMYGOODMAN: And describe where Amerli is.

ERINEVERS: Amerli is in Salahuddin, which is north of Baghdad. It’s the same province that Tikrit is in. And the town itself is kind of the northeast of the province. So, ISIS had been laying siege to this town for two months. The ground forces alone were unable to route ISIS from the town, but then, after the U.S. airstrikes on August 31st, they cleared ISIS from the town, then proceeded to spread out throughout Salahuddin province and neighboring Kirkuk province, and attacked the Sunni villages in those provinces. So they essentially laid siege to all of the Sunni villages in a pretty broad area, set homes on fire, looted them, in some cases destroyed them with explosives and earth-moving equipment.

We used satellite imagery. We were on the ground, obviously, and saw some of the destruction with our own eyes, spoke to about 30 persons who were displaced as a result of—as a result of this clearing operation. And then we used satellite imagery in order to determine that the damage that we saw was in fact caused by militias and not in the course of fighting or by ISIS. So we had determined the timeline, essentially, of when what we saw happened, so that we could be clear that those areas were under the control of militias and not under the control of ISIS or not, you know—not engaging in battle at the time.

AMYGOODMAN: Why are the militias doing this? And what is their relationship to the Iraqi army?

ERINEVERS: So, the militias are not under any formal chain of command. They are leading the fight against ISIS, and they are responsible, essentially, to themselves.

Why they’re doing this, I think, is really anybody’s guess. But from statements that—you know, statements that we’ve heard from militia leaders and from what people on the ground have told us that militia—you know, militia fighters were saying to them when they were on the ground, it seems like they were essentially trying to clear the area of Sunnis.

And after this campaign, several months afterwards, in January, the same militias went through Diyala province, which is a province neighboring Iran, and essentially carried out the same kinds of operations, except at an even more extreme kind of level. So, whereas in this report we documented militias kidnapping people and torturing people, in Diyala we documented the same militias carrying out summary executions of Sunni civilians and even a large massacre of 72 civilians in one town in Diyala in the course of their fighting.

AARON MATÉ: Is there any evidence they’ve been doing this with U.S. weapons?

ERINEVERS: We’ve seen them with U.S. weapons. We don’t know exactly how they’ve gotten their hands on these weapons, you know, so there’s a lot of speculation as to how they’re getting the weapons. Some people say that they’re getting them through the Iraqi army, which is the official recipient of the weapons. And other people—you know, other people are saying that they’re getting them from ISIS, which obviously is also getting the weapons in the course of their fight on the ground.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to read to you a quote from the former CIA director, David Petraeus, former—he’s also a general. He told The Washington Post, quote, "I would argue that the foremost threat to Iraq’s long-term stability and the broader regional equilibrium is not the Islamic State; rather, it is Shiite militias, many backed by—and some guided by—Iran," Petraeus said. He went on to say, quote, "Longer term, Iranian-backed Shia militia could emerge as the preeminent power in the country, one that is outside the control of the government and instead answerable to Tehran." Your response to this, Erin?

ERINEVERS: I think, unfortunately, that that’s a correct evaluation of where Iraq is headed. So even though, you know, in Iraq right now we have a new government with a reformist prime minister, and his allies are also, you know, definitely keen to rein in these militias, to undo some of the kind of very abusive legislation and practices that the former prime minister put in place, unfortunately, the power on the ground that is the strongest right now is the militias, and they are not answerable to the government. There is no accountability for any of the abuses that we’ve documented on the part of militias. And this is going back even before—you know, even before Mosul fell, the militias were gaining power within the security forces. Once Mosul fell, that relationship flipped, and the militias became the leading force on the ground, and the security forces are kind of following behind.

AARON MATÉ: On the issue of U.S. weapons, there are arms control laws. What has been the White House response about these atrocities potentially enabled with U.S. weaponry?

ERINEVERS: The White House has not specifically addressed the issue of militias getting their hands on U.S. weaponry. But they have, in recent weeks, kind of ratcheted up their language. They’re voicing concern about militia abuses, about the possibility of militias being sectarian—which obviously is a foregone conclusion. So, I think that it’s something that the U.S. is seriously considering. But they haven’t—they haven’t publicly addressed specifically the issue of militias getting their hands on weapons.

AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the Iraqi security forces. A report by ABC News revealed U.S.-trained and -armed Iraqi military units are under investigation for committing war crimes. This is an except of ABC’s report by Brian Ross.

BRIANROSS: Innocent civilians massacred, prisoners tortured, acts that shock the civilized world—all discovered by ABC News online, not from the usual ISIS accounts, but on social media sites connected to elite units of the Iraqi army, the very forces the U.S. is counting on to help stop such atrocities.

Here, a group of men in Iraqi army uniforms give a sign of approval after a civilian is beheaded behind them. In this video, a young boy, a suspected ISIS recruit, is about to be executed, shot dead in the street with men in what appear to be Iraqi uniforms crowding around the scene. This appears to be an insignia of the Iraqi special forces. There are dozens of such videos and still images now being investigated by U.S. and Iraqi authorities to determine if they are in fact part of the Iraqi army, like these men with a severed head or these men dragging the body of a captured prisoner. In this video, what appears to be two unarmed Iraqi civilians are about to be murdered, like the others already dead next to them. This video, slowed down, shows militia fighters with U.S.-supplied weapons.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s an excerpt of an ABC report by Brian Ross. Erin Evers, you reviewed all of this footage for them?

ERINEVERS: Yes, I did. You know, the sad thing about all this footage is that it’s essentially visual documentation of abuses that we, other organizations and the media have been documenting for years on the part of Iraqi security forces, and that successive U.S. and Iraqi governments have turned a blind eye to. So, the kinds of abuses that we saw in that report, these atrocious—you know, absolutely atrocious acts of no accountability whatsoever, is something that the U.S. government has known about for a long time and just failed to do anything about.

AMYGOODMAN: What’s their response to you, Human Rights Watch?

ERINEVERS: You know, their response to the report was that they have actually withheld aid from specific groups who they knew were committing these abuses before. That’s the first time that I ever heard about the U.S. actually withholding aid from abusive groups. That’s, of course, their obligation under the Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. from providing weapons to human rights-abusing forces. But they have never responded directly to us in terms of the allegations, you know, the kind of documentation that we’ve done of these kinds of abuses by Iraqi security forces.

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Tue, 24 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0400"Inside Baghdad's Brutal Battle Against ISIS": In Chaos of Post-Invasion Iraq, Militias Take Holdhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/24/inside_baghdads_brutal_battle_against_isis
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-24:en/story/a23c02 AARON MATÉ: Matt Aikins with Rolling Stone , your piece is called &quot;Inside Baghdad&#8217;s Brutal Battle Against ISIS .&quot; You were there speaking to Iraqi officials and militia leaders. Can you tell us about what you found? And talk about the broader Iraqi policy of deploying militias and how it&#8217;s arose, particularly with the collapse of the Iraqi army when ISIS overran large parts of the country last year.
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Sure. Well, what, you know, happened was essentially a reaction to the rapid gains that ISIS made this summer. When the defense of Mosul and other areas collapsed, these militias were called upon as a kind of last line of defense in order to protect the sort of Shia areas of the southern part of the country, including Iraq. And they were effective at doing that. But in doing so, as we&#8217;ve already discussed, they took over this preeminent position within the Iraqi state.
So, when I was there, I met with militia commanders, including one from a very notorious militia called Asa&#8217;ib Ahl al-Haq. It&#8217;s a splinter group from the Mahdi Army that once fought the Americans and is now fighting ISIS . And the commander explained to me something that I&#8217;ve heard from other places, as well, that on the ground, these militia commanders are often leading the operations, and they&#8217;re essentially mixed in with Iraqi army and police units, borrowing weapons, being supplied by ammunition from them, using heavy weapons, and often exercising command and control over Iraqi police and army. And what that says is that the two of—you know, the formal state security services, what&#8217;s left with them, and these militias have become entangled to such a degree that it&#8217;s hard in many cases to make a meaningful distinction between them on the ground.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re speaking to Matt Aikins in Karachi, Pakistan, right now. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s a crow behind you or something, Matt. But you begin your piece by saying, &quot;If you visited the Interior Ministry compound in Baghdad during the holy month of Muharram this past fall, you would be forgiven for thinking that Iraq, like its neighbor Iran, is a country whose official religion is Shiite Islam.&quot; Explain.
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Well, the thing is that you would be just confronted with these religious symbols that make, you know, no pretense that Iraq is a state that is supposed to have equal regard for the different sects and religions that compose it. Baghdad is now a Shia city. And so, I think one of the things we&#8217;ve seen after the events this summer is that mask has really come off. As Erin pointed out, a lot of these things were happening before. And a lot of them were predicted. What happened in Amerli and in Diyala was essentially predicted by Human Rights Watch and other groups that were investigating it, that there would be what amounts to ethnic cleansing, in my view. But the mask has sort of slipped off now, and there&#8217;s really no pretense or attempt at pretense that this is not a sectarian war that&#8217;s being fought by the preeminent actors on both sides, ISIS and the militias.
AARON MATÉ: So, Matt, given this dynamic, what do you think this portends for Iraq&#8217;s future? Could we see a return to the brutal days of 2006, 2007, when the sectarian conflict was out of control and tens of thousands of killed? Is there a fear of sliding back into that?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : I mean, I think we already are—we already are there, in many ways. You know, last year, there was an estimated 17,000 Iraqis that were killed. That&#8217;s the most violent year by far since the peak of the violence, 2006, 2007. In some cases, it&#8217;s one-sided, in areas of Baghdad that I visited. These were Sunni areas that had been taken over by al-Qaeda in 2006 and &#39;07, often because the communities wanted some sort of defense against the Shia militias. Now they&#39;re being terrorized by Shia groups. There&#8217;s absolute, you know, outright warfare in the countryside, massacres on both sides. So I think we&#8217;re actually there. With the shift toward offensive operations of the parties&#8217; militias, especially with large areas like Mosul and Fallujah, I mean, they&#8217;re going to make what&#8217;s been happening in Amerli and Diyala look minor in comparison to the scale of massacres and human rights abuses that are likely to occur.
AMY GOODMAN : Matt, here in the United States, where you just were, you have the Republicans attacking President Obama for negotiating with Iran around a nuclear bomb, and you have, of course, the call to defeat the so-called Islamic State, ISIS . But here you have, on the ground, it&#8217;s Iran that is fighting ISIS . How much coordination is going on between the United States and Iran now in trying to defeat ISIS ?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Well, they&#8217;re often sharing the same space. One Iraqi adviser told me it was like hide and seek. You know, the Iranians would show up when the Americans weren&#8217;t there, and the Americans would show up when the Iranians weren&#8217;t there. This is in the sort of ministries and main bases. The Iranians are the only ones present in the field, really, so far.
I think you have to acknowledge that Iran has legitimate interests in Iraq. I mean, this is their doorstep. ISIS is a brutal anti-Shia group that poses a grave threat to their own interests. And the fact that we have this longstanding proxy war with Iran has really prevented any sort of constructive engagement on solving the problems that are going on in Iraq, and instead you have a kind of willful denial about the actual common strategy that is currently taking place.
AARON MATÉ: And, Erin Evers, looking forward also, how do you think these abuses will impact the long-term fight against ISIS and also Iraq&#8217;s basic unity?
ERIN EVERS : I think, you know, what we&#8217;re seeing right now already, actually, is that these kinds of abuses are really radicalizing and ostracizing the Sunni population even more than they already were. So, people that we talked to on the ground who were displaced by the fighting, who were displaced by militias who threatened them with death if they tried to come back to their homes, are essentially now—you&#8217;ve got thousands of people displaced as a result of these militia operations who are literally geographically stuck between ISIS on one side, whose ideology they don&#8217;t accept and who they don&#8217;t want to be a part of, but who do not have a sectarian mandate to kill them and who haven&#8217;t specifically threatened to kill them like the sectarian militias have. And so, our concern is that for every tactical gain that the Shia militias are making against ISIS , in the long run they&#8217;re actually empowering ISIS and emboldening ISIS and throwing people straight into their hands.
So, the way that I see things going, from my experience on the ground, from what we documented in Amerli and Diyala and other areas all around Iraq, is that if things keep going this way and that if militias keep leading the fight, essentially, you&#8217;re going to have a state that is a militia state with a large, you know, kind of swath of territory that militias control, Sunnis kind of hiding in the western corner, and ISIS a problem that is never really fully dealt with, because—you know, because a sectarian—there&#8217;s no sectarian solution to the ISIS problem. You can&#8217;t get rid of all of the Sunnis in Iraq. They are part of Iraq. And, you know, most kind of average Iraqis don&#8217;t want to see the country split up. So, I think that it&#8217;s—I think that it poses a huge problem, both politically and in terms of security for Iraq&#8217;s future.
AMY GOODMAN : Erin, you have said that the U.S. military didn&#8217;t give some weapons to some groups—at least they said that to you. Matt, you write in your piece, &quot;the Obama administration has also argued that its program to supply weapons to the Iraqi government should be eligible for an exemption from arms-control laws.&quot;
MATTHIEU AIKINS : That&#8217;s right. I mean, obviously they&#8217;re worried about the weapons they&#8217;re now transferring to Iraq, in a sort of rushed emergency program, being put into the wrong hands, so they&#8217;d like to exempt themselves from those legal obligations. I think it&#8217;s ironic that, you know, having flooded the country once with weapons by destroying and disbanding Saddam Hussein&#8217;s army and then flooding it again with weapons by arming this hastily prepared army and police in response to the insurgency, which is weapons that have now fallen in the hands of ISIS . This, the third solution, is to, again, flood more weapons into the country.
AMY GOODMAN : Finally—
MATTHIEU AIKINS : And I think it just shows the lack of imagination that exists on the part of the policymakers who are responsible for dealing with these problems.
AMY GOODMAN : Finally, Matt, President Obama is meeting with the new Afghan president, Ghani, today in Washington. You&#8217;ve lived in Afghanistan for years. The significance for this meeting—the significance of this meeting, and what President Ghani will be calling for?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : President Ghani is going to be calling for more troops and more money. He understands that the Afghan state is utterly dependent on international funding. The budget gap is extraordinary. It&#8217;s something like 20 percent of the country&#8217;s GDP right now that&#8217;s being spent by the international community on the armed forces alone. So, basically, Afghanistan is going to remain a client state of the United States and the international community for a long time to come, especially if the conflict isn&#8217;t brought to some sort of negotiated solution. And Ghani is basically trying to undo the damage that President Karzai did to that relationship, that really threatened a total cutoff of, if not aid, but troops.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we want to thank you both for being with us. Matthieu Aikins, joining us from Karachi, Pakistan, the George Polk Award-winning foreign correspondent, his latest piece for Rolling Stone we&#8217;ll link to. It&#8217;s headlined &quot;Inside Baghdad&#8217;s Brutal Battle Against ISIS .&quot; And thanks so much to Erin Evers, a Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch. She co-wrote the new report , &quot;After Liberation Came Destruction: Iraqi Militias and the Aftermath of Amerli.&quot; She&#8217;s been on the ground in Iraq with Human Rights Watch since September of 2012. And we&#8217;ll link to that report, as well.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we look at the issue of Iran, Israel and Palestine. Stay with us. AARON MATÉ: Matt Aikins with Rolling Stone, your piece is called "Inside Baghdad’s Brutal Battle Against ISIS." You were there speaking to Iraqi officials and militia leaders. Can you tell us about what you found? And talk about the broader Iraqi policy of deploying militias and how it’s arose, particularly with the collapse of the Iraqi army when ISIS overran large parts of the country last year.

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Sure. Well, what, you know, happened was essentially a reaction to the rapid gains that ISIS made this summer. When the defense of Mosul and other areas collapsed, these militias were called upon as a kind of last line of defense in order to protect the sort of Shia areas of the southern part of the country, including Iraq. And they were effective at doing that. But in doing so, as we’ve already discussed, they took over this preeminent position within the Iraqi state.

So, when I was there, I met with militia commanders, including one from a very notorious militia called Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq. It’s a splinter group from the Mahdi Army that once fought the Americans and is now fighting ISIS. And the commander explained to me something that I’ve heard from other places, as well, that on the ground, these militia commanders are often leading the operations, and they’re essentially mixed in with Iraqi army and police units, borrowing weapons, being supplied by ammunition from them, using heavy weapons, and often exercising command and control over Iraqi police and army. And what that says is that the two of—you know, the formal state security services, what’s left with them, and these militias have become entangled to such a degree that it’s hard in many cases to make a meaningful distinction between them on the ground.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re speaking to Matt Aikins in Karachi, Pakistan, right now. I don’t know if that’s a crow behind you or something, Matt. But you begin your piece by saying, "If you visited the Interior Ministry compound in Baghdad during the holy month of Muharram this past fall, you would be forgiven for thinking that Iraq, like its neighbor Iran, is a country whose official religion is Shiite Islam." Explain.

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Well, the thing is that you would be just confronted with these religious symbols that make, you know, no pretense that Iraq is a state that is supposed to have equal regard for the different sects and religions that compose it. Baghdad is now a Shia city. And so, I think one of the things we’ve seen after the events this summer is that mask has really come off. As Erin pointed out, a lot of these things were happening before. And a lot of them were predicted. What happened in Amerli and in Diyala was essentially predicted by Human Rights Watch and other groups that were investigating it, that there would be what amounts to ethnic cleansing, in my view. But the mask has sort of slipped off now, and there’s really no pretense or attempt at pretense that this is not a sectarian war that’s being fought by the preeminent actors on both sides, ISIS and the militias.

AARON MATÉ: So, Matt, given this dynamic, what do you think this portends for Iraq’s future? Could we see a return to the brutal days of 2006, 2007, when the sectarian conflict was out of control and tens of thousands of killed? Is there a fear of sliding back into that?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: I mean, I think we already are—we already are there, in many ways. You know, last year, there was an estimated 17,000 Iraqis that were killed. That’s the most violent year by far since the peak of the violence, 2006, 2007. In some cases, it’s one-sided, in areas of Baghdad that I visited. These were Sunni areas that had been taken over by al-Qaeda in 2006 and '07, often because the communities wanted some sort of defense against the Shia militias. Now they're being terrorized by Shia groups. There’s absolute, you know, outright warfare in the countryside, massacres on both sides. So I think we’re actually there. With the shift toward offensive operations of the parties’ militias, especially with large areas like Mosul and Fallujah, I mean, they’re going to make what’s been happening in Amerli and Diyala look minor in comparison to the scale of massacres and human rights abuses that are likely to occur.

AMYGOODMAN: Matt, here in the United States, where you just were, you have the Republicans attacking President Obama for negotiating with Iran around a nuclear bomb, and you have, of course, the call to defeat the so-called Islamic State, ISIS. But here you have, on the ground, it’s Iran that is fighting ISIS. How much coordination is going on between the United States and Iran now in trying to defeat ISIS?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Well, they’re often sharing the same space. One Iraqi adviser told me it was like hide and seek. You know, the Iranians would show up when the Americans weren’t there, and the Americans would show up when the Iranians weren’t there. This is in the sort of ministries and main bases. The Iranians are the only ones present in the field, really, so far.

I think you have to acknowledge that Iran has legitimate interests in Iraq. I mean, this is their doorstep. ISIS is a brutal anti-Shia group that poses a grave threat to their own interests. And the fact that we have this longstanding proxy war with Iran has really prevented any sort of constructive engagement on solving the problems that are going on in Iraq, and instead you have a kind of willful denial about the actual common strategy that is currently taking place.

AARON MATÉ: And, Erin Evers, looking forward also, how do you think these abuses will impact the long-term fight against ISIS and also Iraq’s basic unity?

ERINEVERS: I think, you know, what we’re seeing right now already, actually, is that these kinds of abuses are really radicalizing and ostracizing the Sunni population even more than they already were. So, people that we talked to on the ground who were displaced by the fighting, who were displaced by militias who threatened them with death if they tried to come back to their homes, are essentially now—you’ve got thousands of people displaced as a result of these militia operations who are literally geographically stuck between ISIS on one side, whose ideology they don’t accept and who they don’t want to be a part of, but who do not have a sectarian mandate to kill them and who haven’t specifically threatened to kill them like the sectarian militias have. And so, our concern is that for every tactical gain that the Shia militias are making against ISIS, in the long run they’re actually empowering ISIS and emboldening ISIS and throwing people straight into their hands.

So, the way that I see things going, from my experience on the ground, from what we documented in Amerli and Diyala and other areas all around Iraq, is that if things keep going this way and that if militias keep leading the fight, essentially, you’re going to have a state that is a militia state with a large, you know, kind of swath of territory that militias control, Sunnis kind of hiding in the western corner, and ISIS a problem that is never really fully dealt with, because—you know, because a sectarian—there’s no sectarian solution to the ISIS problem. You can’t get rid of all of the Sunnis in Iraq. They are part of Iraq. And, you know, most kind of average Iraqis don’t want to see the country split up. So, I think that it’s—I think that it poses a huge problem, both politically and in terms of security for Iraq’s future.

AMYGOODMAN: Erin, you have said that the U.S. military didn’t give some weapons to some groups—at least they said that to you. Matt, you write in your piece, "the Obama administration has also argued that its program to supply weapons to the Iraqi government should be eligible for an exemption from arms-control laws."

MATTHIEUAIKINS: That’s right. I mean, obviously they’re worried about the weapons they’re now transferring to Iraq, in a sort of rushed emergency program, being put into the wrong hands, so they’d like to exempt themselves from those legal obligations. I think it’s ironic that, you know, having flooded the country once with weapons by destroying and disbanding Saddam Hussein’s army and then flooding it again with weapons by arming this hastily prepared army and police in response to the insurgency, which is weapons that have now fallen in the hands of ISIS. This, the third solution, is to, again, flood more weapons into the country.

AMYGOODMAN: Finally—

MATTHIEUAIKINS: And I think it just shows the lack of imagination that exists on the part of the policymakers who are responsible for dealing with these problems.

AMYGOODMAN: Finally, Matt, President Obama is meeting with the new Afghan president, Ghani, today in Washington. You’ve lived in Afghanistan for years. The significance for this meeting—the significance of this meeting, and what President Ghani will be calling for?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: President Ghani is going to be calling for more troops and more money. He understands that the Afghan state is utterly dependent on international funding. The budget gap is extraordinary. It’s something like 20 percent of the country’s GDP right now that’s being spent by the international community on the armed forces alone. So, basically, Afghanistan is going to remain a client state of the United States and the international community for a long time to come, especially if the conflict isn’t brought to some sort of negotiated solution. And Ghani is basically trying to undo the damage that President Karzai did to that relationship, that really threatened a total cutoff of, if not aid, but troops.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you both for being with us. Matthieu Aikins, joining us from Karachi, Pakistan, the George Polk Award-winning foreign correspondent, his latest piece for Rolling Stone we’ll link to. It’s headlined "Inside Baghdad’s Brutal Battle Against ISIS." And thanks so much to Erin Evers, a Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch. She co-wrote the new report, "After Liberation Came Destruction: Iraqi Militias and the Aftermath of Amerli." She’s been on the ground in Iraq with Human Rights Watch since September of 2012. And we’ll link to that report, as well.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we look at the issue of Iran, Israel and Palestine. Stay with us.

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Tue, 24 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0400A Double Standard on Leaks? As Whistleblowers Jailed, Petraeus Escapes Prison & Advises White Househttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/17/a_double_standard_on_leaks_as
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-17:en/story/de1fe6 AARON MATÉ: With prosecutions of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou and several others, the Obama administration is by far the most aggressive in history when it comes to punishing leaks. But is there a double standard when it comes to who is punished and who walks free?
That&#8217;s the question being raised after a lenient plea deal for David Petraeus, the retired four-star general and former head of the CIA . Unlike the others, Petraeus did not release information to expose perceived government wrongdoing. Instead, he gave classified material to his mistress, Paula Broadwell, who was also writing his biography. Petraeus let Broadwell access his CIA email account and other sensitive material, including the names of covert operatives in Afghanistan, war strategy, and quotes from White House meetings. Petraeus then lied to the FBI , telling investigators he never gave Broadwell any classified information.
After an investigation that raised eyebrows for its slow pace, the FBI and federal prosecutors recommended felony charges. But unlike other leakers, Petraeus was not indicted. Instead, earlier this month, he reached a plea deal, admitting to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information. Prosecutors won&#8217;t seek prison time, but instead two years probation and a fine. His sentencing is next month. Meanwhile, after being forced to resign in 2012, Petraeus remains an administration insider, advising the White House on the war against ISIS .
AMY GOODMAN : On Monday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest defended the administration&#8217;s ongoing consultations with Petraeus.
PRESS SECRETARY JOSH EARNEST : He is, I think, legitimately regarded as an expert when it comes to the security situation in Iraq. So I think it&#8217;s—it makes a lot of sense for senior administration officials to, on occasion, consult him for advice.
REPORTER : And any particular security precautions that you take in this situation, given his legal entanglements?
PRESS SECRETARY JOSH EARNEST : Not that I&#8217;m aware of.
AMY GOODMAN : As General David Petraeus avoids jail time and advises the White House, a lawyer for imprisoned government contractor Stephen Kim is accusing the Obama administration of blatant hypocrisy and demanding Kim&#8217;s immediate release. In a letter to the Justice Department, Abbe Lowell says, quote, &quot;The decision to permit General Petraeus to plead guilty to a misdemeanor demonstrates more clearly than ever the profound double standard that applies when prosecuting so-called &#39;leakers&#39; and those accused of disclosing classified information for their own purposes,&quot; unquote. Kim was convicted earlier this year for sharing information from an intelligence report on North Korea with a reporter from Fox News.
The famed lawyer Abbe Lowell says prosecutors dismissed his offer to have Kim plead guilty to the same misdemeanor they ended up offering to Petraeus. He writes, quote, &quot;You rejected that out of hand, saying that a large reason for your position was that Mr. Kim lied to FBI agents.&quot; But since Petraeus also lied to the FBI , Lowell concludes, quote, &quot;Lower-level employees like Mr. Kim are prosecuted under the Espionage Act because they are easy targets and lack the resources and political connections to fight back. High level officials (such as General Petraeus) ... leak classified information to forward their own agendas (or to impress their mistresses) with virtual impunity,&quot; unquote.
The lenient treatment of Petraeus falls in line with similar responses to leaks from other administration insiders. CIA Director Leon Panetta helped provide secret information to the filmmakers of Zero Dark Thirty , the Hollywood film about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, but never faced punishment. And just last week, it emerged that a long-running investigation of a former top-ranking Pentagon general for leaking the information that publicly exposed a U.S. cyberwarfare operation against Iran has stalled. According to The Washington Post , General James Cartwright had authorization to speak to reporters, and defense attorneys, quote, &quot;might try to put the White House&#8217;s relationship with reporters and the use of authorized leaks on display, creating a potentially embarrassing distraction for the administration,&quot; unquote.
Well, for more, we go to Washington, D.C., and we&#8217;re joined by Jesselyn Radack, National Security &amp; Human Rights director at the Government Accountability Project. She&#8217;s former ethics adviser to the U.S. Department of Justice. She is one of the lawyers for Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou—three whistleblowers all charged under the Espionage Act. She recently wrote a piece for Foreign Policy magazine headlined &quot;Petraeus, Snowden, and the Department of Two-Tiered Justice.&quot;
Why don&#8217;t you lay out what that two-tiered Department of Justice looks like, Jesselyn Radack?
JESSELYN RADACK : Well, I think the two-tiered justice is simply that if you are powerful or politically connected, you can leak regularly with impunity. And we&#8217;ve seen that, because the top three past CIA directors, including Leon Panetta, including General David Petraeus, including Brennan, have all leaked covert identities and suffered no consequence for it. And meanwhile, the victims in Obama&#8217;s war on whistleblowers have all been low-level employees and, again, people who have been whistleblowers whose disclosures were not meant for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, but instead were meant to reveal fraud, waste, abuse and illegality, and all of whom revealed far less than Petraeus ever did.
AARON MATÉ: What about the use of the Espionage Act against some of your clients? With using that law, they can&#8217;t mount a defense that takes into account their intent. I imagine when investigators and prosecutors were looking into the case with Petraeus, they took into account what his intent was, which was to give material to his girlfriend. But someone like Edward Snowden can&#8217;t mount the same defense. It makes no difference, according to the Espionage Act, whether he gave documents to journalists versus whether he had given them to a foreign intelligence agency, which of course he did not do.
JESSELYN RADACK : That&#8217;s exactly right. The Espionage Act is effectively a strict liability offense, meaning that you can raise no defense. It does not matter whether you were leaking secrets to a foreign enemy for profit or whether you were giving information to journalists in the public interest to give back to the people who have a right to know what&#8217;s been done in their name. And the fact that the Espionage Act has been used on Tom Drake and John Kiriakou, on Edward Snowden, Stephen Kim, Jeffrey Sterling, Chelsea Manning, Shamai Leibowitz, to suddenly have Petraeus charged under a completely different law just smack of hypocrisy. Moreover, under the Espionage Act—I mean, technically, Petraeus should be charged under the Espionage Act but also with one count of making false statements and three counts under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. And instead, he&#8217;s not charged under the Espionage Act, and, in fact, he&#8217;s not charged or indicted at all. He&#8217;s able to strike a sweetheart plea deal under Section 1924, which is far more lenient, far less punitive and under which he is able to mount a defense, unlike any of the people that I&#8217;ve represented.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to turn to General Petraeus in his own words. In 2010, at the time NBC&#8217;s David Gregory interviewed him on Meet the Press .
DAVID GREGORY : There&#8217;s another developing story that the military&#8217;s very unhappy about, and that is the leaking of secret war documents that were put on the Internet by WikiLeaks. There&#8217;s another 15,000 documents that are coming out. What&#8217;s in those documents? How damaging will they be?
GEN . DAVID PETRAEUS : Well, first of all, this is beyond unfortunate. I mean, this is a betrayal of trust, I mean, someone who had—apparently had access to highly classified material, albeit not top secret, I don&#8217;t believe, and not the codeword and so forth. And, in fact, a lot of this, when we first looked at it, we saw it as what we call first reports. It&#8217;s undigested. It&#8217;s not the final analysis. However, as we have looked through it more and more, there are—there are source names, and in some cases there are actual names, of individuals with whom we have partnered in difficult missions in difficult places. And, obviously, that is very reprehensible.
AMY GOODMAN : So, that&#8217;s David Petraeus in 2010. Broadwell&#8217;s book—his mistress and biographer—came out in 2012, so this would have been right, perhaps, around the same time. Your response to what the general was saying?
JESSELYN RADACK : You know, the general has also made similar hypocritical statements vis-à-vis my client, John Kiriakou. And the way the Espionage Act has been interpreted is that it does not in fact matter if harm occurred. Nevertheless, the government has gone to great lengths in every single case of whistleblowing to claim that great harm occurred from the disclosures of Chelsea Manning. Since the general was referring to the Manning leaks in particular, I went to the court-martial, and when it came time for the government to present a damage assessment, it in fact could not come up with one. So, although in all of these cases, Snowden—Tom Drake was said—he was going to have blood of soldiers on his hands. John Kiriakou was said to have caused untold damage now and into the future. The government waves its hands and screams and cries about damage, when none has occurred. And in fact, as the government well knows, the way the Espionage Act has been interpreted, it doesn&#8217;t in fact matter if damage happens.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We&#8217;re talking to Jesselyn Radack, who is National Security &amp; Human Rights director at the Government Accountability Project, former ethics adviser to the U.S. Department of Justice under George W. Bush. She&#8217;s the lawyer for Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou—Kiriakou who&#8217;s just come out of jail but under house arrest. And she recently wrote a piece for Foreign Policy magazine headlined &quot;Petraeus, Snowden, and the Department of Two-Tiered Justice.&quot; Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Our guest is Jesselyn Radack, National Security &amp; Human Rights director at the Government Accountability Project. She is the attorney for Edward Snowden, as well as Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou. Aaron?
AARON MATÉ: Yes. I want to turn to comments from Senator Dianne Feinstein. Speaking earlier this year to CNN , Feinstein urged the Department of Justice not to bring criminal charges against General Petraeus.
SEN . DIANNE FEINSTEIN : This man has suffered enough, in my view. He&#8217;s the four-star general of our generation. I saw him in Iraq. He put together the Army Field Manual. He put together the Awakening and how it worked out. He, I think, is a very brilliant man. People aren&#8217;t perfect. He made a mistake. He lost his job as CIA director because of it. I mean, how much do you want to punish somebody?
AARON MATÉ: That&#8217;s Senator Dianne Feinstein. Jesselyn, if you could respond to that? &quot;This man&quot; who &quot;has suffered enough,&quot; she says. And also, before the break, you mentioned the issue of damage. I wanted to ask you, how does the issue—how does the damage created by Petraeus&#8217;s leaks compare to damage ostensibly created from other leaks, such as your clients—Edward Snowden, for example?
JESSELYN RADACK : Well, in the Snowden case, there has been no actual damage shown to have occurred from his disclosures to journalists to print articles. And in terms of Petraeus, whatever made it into Paula Broadwell&#8217;s book, there could be a lot of potential damage. There could have been a lot of potential damage. I have not read her résumé-fluffing book myself. But I think what Petraeus is accused of disclosing, including codenames and conversations with the president of the United States, notes from the National Security Council, war plans, that information is far more highly classified and could be far more dangerous to have been revealed to anybody.
In terms of Dianne Feinstein&#8217;s statement and Senator McCain&#8217;s statement, which closely tracked Feinstein&#8217;s, you know, I think they&#8217;re right that people have suffered enough, and this is a life-crushing thing to be charged with espionage or to be under any kind of criminal cloud whatsoever. However, with a number of my clients, we approached Congress, who did nothing. No member of Congress did anything. There were no crocodile tears. There were no public statements. There was nothing. In terms of what John Kiriakou—
AMY GOODMAN : The White House—the White House is not seeking their advice, as they are with General David Petraeus?
JESSELYN RADACK : No, not at all. And, in fact, what Tom Drake and John Kiriakou went through, they went—they lost their careers, their life savings, their pensions, their, you know, marriages and families intact—same with Stephen Kim. I mean, people have paid a huge price and suffered tremendously, far more than Petraeus, who, as you&#8217;ve noted earlier, enjoys a lucrative speaking career, still has his security clearance and is, in fact, advising the White House on ISIS . He has suffered no damage from this.
AMY GOODMAN : Jesselyn Radack—
JESSELYN RADACK : Whereas John Kiriakou and Stephen Kim have both spoken about being suicidal over having the sword of Damocles over their head for so many years.
AMY GOODMAN : So let&#8217;s talk about their particular cases, for people who aren&#8217;t that familiar with them. Last month, I interviewed John Kiriakou , the retired CIA agent, who&#8217;s been released from prison after blowing the whistle on George W. Bush administration&#8217;s torture program. In 2007, he became the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the agency&#8217;s use of waterboarding. I asked him why he believed he was jailed. He spoke from his home, where he&#8217;s still under house arrest.
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Oh, I am absolutely convinced, Amy, that I was jailed because of the torture debate. People leak information in Washington all the time, whether it&#8217;s on purpose or inadvertent. We&#8217;ve seen—we&#8217;ve seen people like former CIA Director Leon Panetta, former CIA Director General Petraeus, leaking classified information with impunity. And that has convinced me that I&#8217;m right when I say that my case was never about leaking. My case was about blowing the whistle on torture.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s John Kiriakou. Jesselyn Radack, he just came out of prison after two years, under house arrest now for how much longer?
JESSELYN RADACK : For 40 more days.
AMY GOODMAN : So, talk about what he has just said and how what he has done compares to what General Petraeus has done.
JESSELYN RADACK : Yeah, I think John makes a very good point. He was the first CIA officer to confirm that the U.S. has a torture program and that we were waterboarding people and that torture was a regular practice, not some rogue pastime. Like John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake revealed surveillance programs in their embryonic stages, much like what Edward Snowden, years later, revealed in their full fruition. In other words, these people have revealed some of the biggest scandals of my generation, including torture and secret surveillance. And they have also revealed information, like in the case of Jeff Sterling and in the case of Stephen Kim, that was embarrassing to the administration. And that is precisely why they are being punished with a draconian law like the Espionage Act, which is an antiquated, heavy-handed World War I law meant to go after spies, not whistleblowers. So, the very visible prosecution of Drake, Kiriakou, Manning, Kim, Sterling, Snowden, these are meant to send a message to people: Do not reveal regular whistleblower information, which would be fraud, waste, abuse or illegality, or else you will be slammed.
AARON MATÉ: Jesselyn, you mentioned Thomas Drake, another one of your clients. He was initially charged under the Espionage Act for leaking information about waste and mismanagement at the National Security Agency. But the case against him collapsed. Democracy Now! spoke to him in 2012 about his case.
THOMAS DRAKE : I was charged under the Espionage Act as part of an indictment that was handed down on me in April of 2010. There was five counts under the Espionage Act for retaining—not leaking, retaining—national defense information, although the government alleged that I was doing so for the purpose of disclosure to those unauthorized to receive it. I was also charged with obstruction of justice, as well as making false statements to FBI agents. ...
My first day on the job was 9/11. And it was shortly after 9/11 that I was exposed to the Pandora&#8217;s box of illegality and government wrongdoing on a very significant scale. So, you had the twin fraud, waste—you know, the twin specters of fraud, waste and abuse being committed on a vast scale through a program called Trailblazer, a multi-billion-dollar program, when in fact there was alternatives that already existed and fulfilled most all the requirements of Trailblazer, even prior to 9/11.
AARON MATÉ: Jesselyn, if you could explain what Thomas Drake did and his status now working in an Apple Store after blowing the whistle?
JESSELYN RADACK : Sure. Thomas Drake is a classic whistleblower. He blew the whistle through every possible means available—to his boss, to the general counsel of the NSA , to the Department of Defense inspector general and to two bipartisan 9/11 congressional investigations. And not only did they fail to redress his concerns, the Department of Defense inspector general turned around and sold him down the river to the Justice Department for prosecution. He eventually went to a Baltimore Sun reporter with clearly strictly unclassified information, which sparked a series of award-winning articles. But nevertheless, Tom Drake was threatened with facing the rest of his life in jail. Those were literally the words that the prosecutor used against him. And in the end, once we were able to show that the so-called classified information against him was not really classified—it had been seized from his home and stamped classified after the fact—the case soon collapsed, and he pled guilty to a minor misdemeanor under the same provision that General Petraeus was able to get his plea bargain.
AMY GOODMAN : I&#8217;d like to ask about the case of Stephen Kim, as well. Last month, The Intercept published details of Kim&#8217;s prosecution in a new article headlined &quot;Destroyed by the Espionage Act: Stephen Kim Spoke to a Reporter. Now He&#8217;s in Jail. This is His Story.&quot; A short film called The Surrender accompanied the report on The Intercept &#39;s website. It&#39;s directed by Stephen Maing and produced by Peter Maass and Laura Poitras, director of Citizenfour , which is the Oscar-winning film about Ed Snowden. This clip begins with Stephen Kim himself.
STEPHEN KIM : In June 2009, I had a new life ahead of me. I had recently gotten married, and I was about to go work for the secretary of state on foreign policy and national security. I had no inkling that the dark clouds would suddenly be appearing.
NARRATION : In the spring of 2009, State Department analyst Stephen Kim was introduced to Fox reporter James Rosen. The meeting was arranged by the State Department&#8217;s Bureau of Public Affairs.
STEPHEN KIM : I remember meeting him right outside the State Department. You know, it&#8217;s just like when you first meet. We talked about many things—Pakistan, the Iranian Revolution, the nuclear fuel cycle. He didn&#8217;t know about South Korea, let alone North Korea. So I had to explain like the basics.
AMY GOODMAN : That is Stephen Kim. He&#8217;s serving 13 months in prison right now. Abbe Lowell, who we referenced earlier, a piece about his letter to the Justice Department is in The New York Times yesterday, written by Matt Apuzzo—Abbe Lowell, the famed lawyer who was the chief minority counsel to Democrats in the House of Representatives during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. He wrote, &quot;The decision to permit General Petraeus to plead guilty to a misdemeanor demonstrates more clearly than ever the profound double standard that applies when prosecuting so-called &#39;leakers&#39; and those accused of disclosing classified information for their own purposes.&quot; Jesselyn Radack?
JESSELYN RADACK : I agree with Abbe Lowell&#8217;s assessment completely. Stephen Kim is a modern-day Horatio Alger story, and he&#8217;s just an amazing man, whose life has been completely ruined because he talked to a reporter about the idea that North Korea might fire test missiles in response to U.N. sanctions. None of this was jaw-dropping news. It was in fact known by anyone who&#8217;s an expert in North Korea, and was widely discussed in Washington circles, yet the government decided to retaliate against him. And he, right now, is serving a 13-month sentence in jail under the Espionage Act. Like my other clients, I doubt that Stephen Kim will ever be able to obtain a security clearance again, ever work in the intelligence community again or on national security issues, and will spend years in debt trying to pay off attorneys&#8217; fees that he has accrued. And that&#8217;s not to mention, you know, his own marriage, that he already lost as a result of a brutal Espionage Act investigation. And his story of the effects of this are not unique at all. People literally end up bankrupted and blacklisted and broken from these Espionage Act investigations and prosecutions.
AARON MATÉ: Or, Jesselyn, in the case of Edward Snowden, they end up in asylum in Russia. Let&#8217;s turn to him. This is a clip from the first video the world saw of Edward Snowden, filmed by Laura Poitras in Hong Kong.
EDWARD SNOWDEN : The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. People will see in the media all of these disclosures. They&#8217;ll know the length that the government is going to grant themselves powers, unilaterally, to create greater control over American society and global society, but they won&#8217;t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.
AARON MATÉ: That&#8217;s Edward Snowden. Jesselyn Radack, as we wrap—we have 30 seconds—what&#8217;s the latest with his case? He said, repeatedly, he would come home if he could get a fair trial.
JESSELYN RADACK : And that still remains true. However, a fair trial is not an Espionage Act trial, which takes place largely in secret and under which he can raise no defense. If the government is interested in talking to us about a Petraeus-type puff plea, I think we&#8217;d be glad to listen. But, you know, that&#8217;s all—that&#8217;s the government&#8217;s move right now. I think Edward Snowden called it correctly. He watched very carefully what happened to Chelsea Manning and what happened to Thomas Drake and made his decisions accordingly. And now that we have the Petraeus model, at least there is a way now to look at this through a different lens, that could be informative in terms of the Edward Snowden case and the Sterling sentence.
AMY GOODMAN : You know, the comparison to Petraeus is very interesting, particularly the last part we&#8217;ve just learned, is that he&#8217;s advising the White House, because Edward Snowden advising the White House and the NSA on information policy could be a very interesting and positive benefit for this country.
JESSELYN RADACK : I agree with you completely. And he&#8217;s expressed an interest in doing so. And, in fact, other governments have repeatedly expressed their interest in having him help them learn more about their informational operational security and what they can do to strengthen cyber, and I think he would have a lot of helpful information. And like all of these whistleblowers, he is a very talented, brilliant, prescient individual. And these people—it&#8217;s a complete loss to the United States if they&#8217;re never allowed to be public servants again.
AARON MATÉ: And, Jesselyn, very quickly, is it true, in terms of these discussions around Snowden with prosecutors, that the government&#8217;s only assurance so far is that they wouldn&#8217;t charge him with the death penalty?
JESSELYN RADACK : Right. Well, yes, they would not charge him with the death penalty, and they also promised he would not be tortured. I think that&#8217;s setting a very low bar.
AMY GOODMAN : Jesselyn Radack, we want to thank you very much for being with us, National Security &amp; Human Rights director at the Government Accountability Project, former ethics adviser to the U.S. Department of Justice under George W. Bush, and lawyer for Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou. We&#8217;ll link to your piece in Foreign Policy , &quot;Petraeus, Snowden, and the Department of Two-Tiered Justice.&quot;
This is Democracy Now! We&#8217;ll be back in a minute with a case you may think you know all about. It certainly got a lot of attention. But, in fact, all of the details of it may be entirely wrong. Stay with us. AARON MATÉ: With prosecutions of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou and several others, the Obama administration is by far the most aggressive in history when it comes to punishing leaks. But is there a double standard when it comes to who is punished and who walks free?

That’s the question being raised after a lenient plea deal for David Petraeus, the retired four-star general and former head of the CIA. Unlike the others, Petraeus did not release information to expose perceived government wrongdoing. Instead, he gave classified material to his mistress, Paula Broadwell, who was also writing his biography. Petraeus let Broadwell access his CIA email account and other sensitive material, including the names of covert operatives in Afghanistan, war strategy, and quotes from White House meetings. Petraeus then lied to the FBI, telling investigators he never gave Broadwell any classified information.

After an investigation that raised eyebrows for its slow pace, the FBI and federal prosecutors recommended felony charges. But unlike other leakers, Petraeus was not indicted. Instead, earlier this month, he reached a plea deal, admitting to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information. Prosecutors won’t seek prison time, but instead two years probation and a fine. His sentencing is next month. Meanwhile, after being forced to resign in 2012, Petraeus remains an administration insider, advising the White House on the war against ISIS.

PRESSSECRETARYJOSHEARNEST: He is, I think, legitimately regarded as an expert when it comes to the security situation in Iraq. So I think it’s—it makes a lot of sense for senior administration officials to, on occasion, consult him for advice.

REPORTER: And any particular security precautions that you take in this situation, given his legal entanglements?

PRESSSECRETARYJOSHEARNEST: Not that I’m aware of.

AMYGOODMAN: As General David Petraeus avoids jail time and advises the White House, a lawyer for imprisoned government contractor Stephen Kim is accusing the Obama administration of blatant hypocrisy and demanding Kim’s immediate release. In a letter to the Justice Department, Abbe Lowell says, quote, "The decision to permit General Petraeus to plead guilty to a misdemeanor demonstrates more clearly than ever the profound double standard that applies when prosecuting so-called 'leakers' and those accused of disclosing classified information for their own purposes," unquote. Kim was convicted earlier this year for sharing information from an intelligence report on North Korea with a reporter from Fox News.

The famed lawyer Abbe Lowell says prosecutors dismissed his offer to have Kim plead guilty to the same misdemeanor they ended up offering to Petraeus. He writes, quote, "You rejected that out of hand, saying that a large reason for your position was that Mr. Kim lied to FBI agents." But since Petraeus also lied to the FBI, Lowell concludes, quote, "Lower-level employees like Mr. Kim are prosecuted under the Espionage Act because they are easy targets and lack the resources and political connections to fight back. High level officials (such as General Petraeus) ... leak classified information to forward their own agendas (or to impress their mistresses) with virtual impunity," unquote.

The lenient treatment of Petraeus falls in line with similar responses to leaks from other administration insiders. CIA Director Leon Panetta helped provide secret information to the filmmakers of Zero Dark Thirty, the Hollywood film about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, but never faced punishment. And just last week, it emerged that a long-running investigation of a former top-ranking Pentagon general for leaking the information that publicly exposed a U.S. cyberwarfare operation against Iran has stalled. According to The Washington Post, General James Cartwright had authorization to speak to reporters, and defense attorneys, quote, "might try to put the White House’s relationship with reporters and the use of authorized leaks on display, creating a potentially embarrassing distraction for the administration," unquote.

Well, for more, we go to Washington, D.C., and we’re joined by Jesselyn Radack, National Security & Human Rights director at the Government Accountability Project. She’s former ethics adviser to the U.S. Department of Justice. She is one of the lawyers for Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou—three whistleblowers all charged under the Espionage Act. She recently wrote a piece for Foreign Policy magazine headlined "Petraeus, Snowden, and the Department of Two-Tiered Justice."

Why don’t you lay out what that two-tiered Department of Justice looks like, Jesselyn Radack?

JESSELYNRADACK: Well, I think the two-tiered justice is simply that if you are powerful or politically connected, you can leak regularly with impunity. And we’ve seen that, because the top three past CIA directors, including Leon Panetta, including General David Petraeus, including Brennan, have all leaked covert identities and suffered no consequence for it. And meanwhile, the victims in Obama’s war on whistleblowers have all been low-level employees and, again, people who have been whistleblowers whose disclosures were not meant for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, but instead were meant to reveal fraud, waste, abuse and illegality, and all of whom revealed far less than Petraeus ever did.

AARON MATÉ: What about the use of the Espionage Act against some of your clients? With using that law, they can’t mount a defense that takes into account their intent. I imagine when investigators and prosecutors were looking into the case with Petraeus, they took into account what his intent was, which was to give material to his girlfriend. But someone like Edward Snowden can’t mount the same defense. It makes no difference, according to the Espionage Act, whether he gave documents to journalists versus whether he had given them to a foreign intelligence agency, which of course he did not do.

JESSELYNRADACK: That’s exactly right. The Espionage Act is effectively a strict liability offense, meaning that you can raise no defense. It does not matter whether you were leaking secrets to a foreign enemy for profit or whether you were giving information to journalists in the public interest to give back to the people who have a right to know what’s been done in their name. And the fact that the Espionage Act has been used on Tom Drake and John Kiriakou, on Edward Snowden, Stephen Kim, Jeffrey Sterling, Chelsea Manning, Shamai Leibowitz, to suddenly have Petraeus charged under a completely different law just smack of hypocrisy. Moreover, under the Espionage Act—I mean, technically, Petraeus should be charged under the Espionage Act but also with one count of making false statements and three counts under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. And instead, he’s not charged under the Espionage Act, and, in fact, he’s not charged or indicted at all. He’s able to strike a sweetheart plea deal under Section 1924, which is far more lenient, far less punitive and under which he is able to mount a defense, unlike any of the people that I’ve represented.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to turn to General Petraeus in his own words. In 2010, at the time NBC’s David Gregory interviewed him on Meet the Press.

DAVIDGREGORY: There’s another developing story that the military’s very unhappy about, and that is the leaking of secret war documents that were put on the Internet by WikiLeaks. There’s another 15,000 documents that are coming out. What’s in those documents? How damaging will they be?

GEN. DAVIDPETRAEUS: Well, first of all, this is beyond unfortunate. I mean, this is a betrayal of trust, I mean, someone who had—apparently had access to highly classified material, albeit not top secret, I don’t believe, and not the codeword and so forth. And, in fact, a lot of this, when we first looked at it, we saw it as what we call first reports. It’s undigested. It’s not the final analysis. However, as we have looked through it more and more, there are—there are source names, and in some cases there are actual names, of individuals with whom we have partnered in difficult missions in difficult places. And, obviously, that is very reprehensible.

AMYGOODMAN: So, that’s David Petraeus in 2010. Broadwell’s book—his mistress and biographer—came out in 2012, so this would have been right, perhaps, around the same time. Your response to what the general was saying?

JESSELYNRADACK: You know, the general has also made similar hypocritical statements vis-à-vis my client, John Kiriakou. And the way the Espionage Act has been interpreted is that it does not in fact matter if harm occurred. Nevertheless, the government has gone to great lengths in every single case of whistleblowing to claim that great harm occurred from the disclosures of Chelsea Manning. Since the general was referring to the Manning leaks in particular, I went to the court-martial, and when it came time for the government to present a damage assessment, it in fact could not come up with one. So, although in all of these cases, Snowden—Tom Drake was said—he was going to have blood of soldiers on his hands. John Kiriakou was said to have caused untold damage now and into the future. The government waves its hands and screams and cries about damage, when none has occurred. And in fact, as the government well knows, the way the Espionage Act has been interpreted, it doesn’t in fact matter if damage happens.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We’re talking to Jesselyn Radack, who is National Security & Human Rights director at the Government Accountability Project, former ethics adviser to the U.S. Department of Justice under George W. Bush. She’s the lawyer for Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou—Kiriakou who’s just come out of jail but under house arrest. And she recently wrote a piece for Foreign Policy magazine headlined "Petraeus, Snowden, and the Department of Two-Tiered Justice." Stay with us.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Our guest is Jesselyn Radack, National Security & Human Rights director at the Government Accountability Project. She is the attorney for Edward Snowden, as well as Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou. Aaron?

AARON MATÉ: Yes. I want to turn to comments from Senator Dianne Feinstein. Speaking earlier this year to CNN, Feinstein urged the Department of Justice not to bring criminal charges against General Petraeus.

SEN. DIANNEFEINSTEIN: This man has suffered enough, in my view. He’s the four-star general of our generation. I saw him in Iraq. He put together the Army Field Manual. He put together the Awakening and how it worked out. He, I think, is a very brilliant man. People aren’t perfect. He made a mistake. He lost his job as CIA director because of it. I mean, how much do you want to punish somebody?

AARON MATÉ: That’s Senator Dianne Feinstein. Jesselyn, if you could respond to that? "This man" who "has suffered enough," she says. And also, before the break, you mentioned the issue of damage. I wanted to ask you, how does the issue—how does the damage created by Petraeus’s leaks compare to damage ostensibly created from other leaks, such as your clients—Edward Snowden, for example?

JESSELYNRADACK: Well, in the Snowden case, there has been no actual damage shown to have occurred from his disclosures to journalists to print articles. And in terms of Petraeus, whatever made it into Paula Broadwell’s book, there could be a lot of potential damage. There could have been a lot of potential damage. I have not read her résumé-fluffing book myself. But I think what Petraeus is accused of disclosing, including codenames and conversations with the president of the United States, notes from the National Security Council, war plans, that information is far more highly classified and could be far more dangerous to have been revealed to anybody.

In terms of Dianne Feinstein’s statement and Senator McCain’s statement, which closely tracked Feinstein’s, you know, I think they’re right that people have suffered enough, and this is a life-crushing thing to be charged with espionage or to be under any kind of criminal cloud whatsoever. However, with a number of my clients, we approached Congress, who did nothing. No member of Congress did anything. There were no crocodile tears. There were no public statements. There was nothing. In terms of what John Kiriakou—

AMYGOODMAN: The White House—the White House is not seeking their advice, as they are with General David Petraeus?

JESSELYNRADACK: No, not at all. And, in fact, what Tom Drake and John Kiriakou went through, they went—they lost their careers, their life savings, their pensions, their, you know, marriages and families intact—same with Stephen Kim. I mean, people have paid a huge price and suffered tremendously, far more than Petraeus, who, as you’ve noted earlier, enjoys a lucrative speaking career, still has his security clearance and is, in fact, advising the White House on ISIS. He has suffered no damage from this.

AMYGOODMAN: Jesselyn Radack—

JESSELYNRADACK: Whereas John Kiriakou and Stephen Kim have both spoken about being suicidal over having the sword of Damocles over their head for so many years.

AMYGOODMAN: So let’s talk about their particular cases, for people who aren’t that familiar with them. Last month, I interviewed John Kiriakou, the retired CIA agent, who’s been released from prison after blowing the whistle on George W. Bush administration’s torture program. In 2007, he became the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the agency’s use of waterboarding. I asked him why he believed he was jailed. He spoke from his home, where he’s still under house arrest.

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Oh, I am absolutely convinced, Amy, that I was jailed because of the torture debate. People leak information in Washington all the time, whether it’s on purpose or inadvertent. We’ve seen—we’ve seen people like former CIA Director Leon Panetta, former CIA Director General Petraeus, leaking classified information with impunity. And that has convinced me that I’m right when I say that my case was never about leaking. My case was about blowing the whistle on torture.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s John Kiriakou. Jesselyn Radack, he just came out of prison after two years, under house arrest now for how much longer?

JESSELYNRADACK: For 40 more days.

AMYGOODMAN: So, talk about what he has just said and how what he has done compares to what General Petraeus has done.

JESSELYNRADACK: Yeah, I think John makes a very good point. He was the first CIA officer to confirm that the U.S. has a torture program and that we were waterboarding people and that torture was a regular practice, not some rogue pastime. Like John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake revealed surveillance programs in their embryonic stages, much like what Edward Snowden, years later, revealed in their full fruition. In other words, these people have revealed some of the biggest scandals of my generation, including torture and secret surveillance. And they have also revealed information, like in the case of Jeff Sterling and in the case of Stephen Kim, that was embarrassing to the administration. And that is precisely why they are being punished with a draconian law like the Espionage Act, which is an antiquated, heavy-handed World War I law meant to go after spies, not whistleblowers. So, the very visible prosecution of Drake, Kiriakou, Manning, Kim, Sterling, Snowden, these are meant to send a message to people: Do not reveal regular whistleblower information, which would be fraud, waste, abuse or illegality, or else you will be slammed.

AARON MATÉ: Jesselyn, you mentioned Thomas Drake, another one of your clients. He was initially charged under the Espionage Act for leaking information about waste and mismanagement at the National Security Agency. But the case against him collapsed. Democracy Now! spoke to him in 2012 about his case.

THOMASDRAKE: I was charged under the Espionage Act as part of an indictment that was handed down on me in April of 2010. There was five counts under the Espionage Act for retaining—not leaking, retaining—national defense information, although the government alleged that I was doing so for the purpose of disclosure to those unauthorized to receive it. I was also charged with obstruction of justice, as well as making false statements to FBI agents. ...

My first day on the job was 9/11. And it was shortly after 9/11 that I was exposed to the Pandora’s box of illegality and government wrongdoing on a very significant scale. So, you had the twin fraud, waste—you know, the twin specters of fraud, waste and abuse being committed on a vast scale through a program called Trailblazer, a multi-billion-dollar program, when in fact there was alternatives that already existed and fulfilled most all the requirements of Trailblazer, even prior to 9/11.

AARON MATÉ: Jesselyn, if you could explain what Thomas Drake did and his status now working in an Apple Store after blowing the whistle?

JESSELYNRADACK: Sure. Thomas Drake is a classic whistleblower. He blew the whistle through every possible means available—to his boss, to the general counsel of the NSA, to the Department of Defense inspector general and to two bipartisan 9/11 congressional investigations. And not only did they fail to redress his concerns, the Department of Defense inspector general turned around and sold him down the river to the Justice Department for prosecution. He eventually went to a Baltimore Sun reporter with clearly strictly unclassified information, which sparked a series of award-winning articles. But nevertheless, Tom Drake was threatened with facing the rest of his life in jail. Those were literally the words that the prosecutor used against him. And in the end, once we were able to show that the so-called classified information against him was not really classified—it had been seized from his home and stamped classified after the fact—the case soon collapsed, and he pled guilty to a minor misdemeanor under the same provision that General Petraeus was able to get his plea bargain.

AMYGOODMAN: I’d like to ask about the case of Stephen Kim, as well. Last month, The Intercept published details of Kim’s prosecution in a new article headlined "Destroyed by the Espionage Act: Stephen Kim Spoke to a Reporter. Now He’s in Jail. This is His Story." A short film called The Surrender accompanied the report on The Intercept's website. It's directed by Stephen Maing and produced by Peter Maass and Laura Poitras, director of Citizenfour, which is the Oscar-winning film about Ed Snowden. This clip begins with Stephen Kim himself.

STEPHENKIM: In June 2009, I had a new life ahead of me. I had recently gotten married, and I was about to go work for the secretary of state on foreign policy and national security. I had no inkling that the dark clouds would suddenly be appearing.

NARRATION: In the spring of 2009, State Department analyst Stephen Kim was introduced to Fox reporter James Rosen. The meeting was arranged by the State Department’s Bureau of Public Affairs.

STEPHENKIM: I remember meeting him right outside the State Department. You know, it’s just like when you first meet. We talked about many things—Pakistan, the Iranian Revolution, the nuclear fuel cycle. He didn’t know about South Korea, let alone North Korea. So I had to explain like the basics.

AMYGOODMAN: That is Stephen Kim. He’s serving 13 months in prison right now. Abbe Lowell, who we referenced earlier, a piece about his letter to the Justice Department is in The New York Times yesterday, written by Matt Apuzzo—Abbe Lowell, the famed lawyer who was the chief minority counsel to Democrats in the House of Representatives during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. He wrote, "The decision to permit General Petraeus to plead guilty to a misdemeanor demonstrates more clearly than ever the profound double standard that applies when prosecuting so-called 'leakers' and those accused of disclosing classified information for their own purposes." Jesselyn Radack?

JESSELYNRADACK: I agree with Abbe Lowell’s assessment completely. Stephen Kim is a modern-day Horatio Alger story, and he’s just an amazing man, whose life has been completely ruined because he talked to a reporter about the idea that North Korea might fire test missiles in response to U.N. sanctions. None of this was jaw-dropping news. It was in fact known by anyone who’s an expert in North Korea, and was widely discussed in Washington circles, yet the government decided to retaliate against him. And he, right now, is serving a 13-month sentence in jail under the Espionage Act. Like my other clients, I doubt that Stephen Kim will ever be able to obtain a security clearance again, ever work in the intelligence community again or on national security issues, and will spend years in debt trying to pay off attorneys’ fees that he has accrued. And that’s not to mention, you know, his own marriage, that he already lost as a result of a brutal Espionage Act investigation. And his story of the effects of this are not unique at all. People literally end up bankrupted and blacklisted and broken from these Espionage Act investigations and prosecutions.

AARON MATÉ: Or, Jesselyn, in the case of Edward Snowden, they end up in asylum in Russia. Let’s turn to him. This is a clip from the first video the world saw of Edward Snowden, filmed by Laura Poitras in Hong Kong.

EDWARDSNOWDEN: The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. People will see in the media all of these disclosures. They’ll know the length that the government is going to grant themselves powers, unilaterally, to create greater control over American society and global society, but they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.

AARON MATÉ: That’s Edward Snowden. Jesselyn Radack, as we wrap—we have 30 seconds—what’s the latest with his case? He said, repeatedly, he would come home if he could get a fair trial.

JESSELYNRADACK: And that still remains true. However, a fair trial is not an Espionage Act trial, which takes place largely in secret and under which he can raise no defense. If the government is interested in talking to us about a Petraeus-type puff plea, I think we’d be glad to listen. But, you know, that’s all—that’s the government’s move right now. I think Edward Snowden called it correctly. He watched very carefully what happened to Chelsea Manning and what happened to Thomas Drake and made his decisions accordingly. And now that we have the Petraeus model, at least there is a way now to look at this through a different lens, that could be informative in terms of the Edward Snowden case and the Sterling sentence.

AMYGOODMAN: You know, the comparison to Petraeus is very interesting, particularly the last part we’ve just learned, is that he’s advising the White House, because Edward Snowden advising the White House and the NSA on information policy could be a very interesting and positive benefit for this country.

JESSELYNRADACK: I agree with you completely. And he’s expressed an interest in doing so. And, in fact, other governments have repeatedly expressed their interest in having him help them learn more about their informational operational security and what they can do to strengthen cyber, and I think he would have a lot of helpful information. And like all of these whistleblowers, he is a very talented, brilliant, prescient individual. And these people—it’s a complete loss to the United States if they’re never allowed to be public servants again.

AARON MATÉ: And, Jesselyn, very quickly, is it true, in terms of these discussions around Snowden with prosecutors, that the government’s only assurance so far is that they wouldn’t charge him with the death penalty?

JESSELYNRADACK: Right. Well, yes, they would not charge him with the death penalty, and they also promised he would not be tortured. I think that’s setting a very low bar.

AMYGOODMAN: Jesselyn Radack, we want to thank you very much for being with us, National Security & Human Rights director at the Government Accountability Project, former ethics adviser to the U.S. Department of Justice under George W. Bush, and lawyer for Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou. We’ll link to your piece in Foreign Policy, "Petraeus, Snowden, and the Department of Two-Tiered Justice."

This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute with a case you may think you know all about. It certainly got a lot of attention. But, in fact, all of the details of it may be entirely wrong. Stay with us.

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Tue, 17 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0400Noam Chomsky: To Deal with ISIS, U.S. Should Own Up to Chaos of Iraq War & Other Radicalizing Actshttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/3/noam_chomsky_to_deal_with_isis
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-03:en/story/5646f6 AMY GOODMAN : Today, part two of our discussion with Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he&#8217;s taught for more than half a century. On Monday on Democracy Now! , Aaron Maté and I interviewed him about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s speech on Iran to Congress. Today, in part two, we look at blowback from the U.S. drone program, the legacy of slavery in the United States, the leaks of Edward Snowden, U.S. meddling in Venezuela and the thawing of U.S.-Cuba relations. We began by asking Professor Chomsky how the U.S. should respond to the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
NOAM CHOMSKY : It&#8217;s very hard to think of anything serious that can be done. I mean, it should be settled diplomatically and peacefully to the extent that that&#8217;s possible. It&#8217;s not inconceivable. I mean, there are—ISIS, it&#8217;s a horrible manifestation of hideous actions. It&#8217;s a real danger to anyone nearby. But so are other forces. And we should be getting together with Iran, which has a huge stake in the matter and is the main force involved, and with the Iraqi government, which is calling for and applauding Iranian support and trying to work out with them some arrangement which will satisfy the legitimate demands of the Sunni population, which is what ISIS is protecting and defending and gaining their support from.
They&#8217;re not coming out of nowhere. I mean, they are—one of the effects, the main effects, of the U.S. invasion of Iraq—there are many horrible effects, but one of them was to incite sectarian conflicts, that had not been there before. If you take a look at Baghdad before the invasion, Sunni and Shia lived intermingled—same neighborhoods, they intermarried. Sometimes they say that they didn&#8217;t even know if their neighbor was a Sunni or a Shia. It was like knowing what Protestant sect your neighbor belongs to. There was pretty close—it wasn&#8217;t—I&#8217;m not claiming it was—it wasn&#8217;t utopia. There were conflicts. But there was no serious conflict, so much so that Iraqis at the time predicted there would never be a conflict. Well, within a couple of years, it had turned into a violent, brutal conflict. You look at Baghdad today, it&#8217;s segregated. What&#8217;s left of the Sunni communities are isolated. The people can&#8217;t talk to their neighbors. There&#8217;s war going on all over. The ISIS is murderous and brutal. The same is true of the Shia militias which confront it. And this is now spread all over the region. There&#8217;s now a major Sunni-Shia conflict rending the region apart, tearing it to shreds.
Now, this cannot be dealt with by bombs. This is much more serious than that. It&#8217;s got to be dealt with by steps towards recovering, remedying the massive damage that was initiated by the sledgehammer smashing Iraq and has now spread. And that does require diplomatic, peaceful means dealing with people who are pretty ugly—and we&#8217;re not very pretty, either, for that matter. But this just has to be done. Exactly what steps should be taken, it&#8217;s hard to say. There are people whose lives are at stake, like the Assyrian Christians, the Yazidi and so on. Apparently, the fighting that protected the—we don&#8217;t know a lot, but it looks as though the ground fighting that protected the Yazidi, largely, was carried out by PKK , the Turkish guerrilla group that&#8217;s fighting for the Kurds in Turkey but based in northern Iraq. And they&#8217;re on the U.S. terrorist list. We can&#8217;t hope to have a strategy that deals with ISIS while opposing and attacking the group that&#8217;s fighting them, just as it doesn&#8217;t make sense to try to have a strategy that excludes Iran, the major state that&#8217;s supporting Iraq in its battle with ISIS .
AMY GOODMAN : What about the fact that so many of those who are joining ISIS now—and a lot has been made of the young people, young women and young men, who are going into Syria through Turkey. I mean, Turkey is a U.S. ally. There is a border there. They freely go back and forth.
NOAM CHOMSKY : That&#8217;s right. And it&#8217;s not just young people. One thing that&#8217;s pretty striking is that it includes people with—educated people, doctors, professionals and others. Whatever we—we may not like it, but ISIS is—the idea of the Islamic caliphate does have an appeal to large sectors of a brutalized global population, which is under severe attack everywhere, has been for a long time. And something has appeared which has an appeal to them. And that can&#8217;t be overlooked if we want to deal with the issue. We have to ask what&#8217;s the nature of the appeal, why is it there, how can we accommodate it and lead to some, if not at least amelioration of the murderous conflict, then maybe some kind of settlement. You can&#8217;t ignore these factors if you want to deal with the issue.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to ask you about more information that&#8217;s come out on the British man who is known as &quot;Jihadi John,&quot; who appears in the Islamic State beheading videos. Mohammed Emwazi has been identified as that man by British security. They say he&#8217;s a 26-year-old born in Kuwait who moved to the U.K. as a child and studied computer science at the University of Westminster. The British group CAGE said he faced at least four years of harassment, detention, deportations, threats and attempts to recruit him by British security agencies, which prevented him from leading a normal life. Emwazi approached CAGE in 2009 after he was detained and interrogated by the British intelligence agency MI5 on what he called a safari vacation in Tanzania. In 2010, after Emwazi was barred from returning to Kuwait, he wrote, quote, &quot;I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started. But know [sic] I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London.&quot; In 2013, a week after he was barred from Kuwait for a third time, Emwazi left home and ended up in Syria. At a news conference, CAGE research director Asim Qureshi spoke about his recollections of Emwazi and compared his case to another British man, Michael Adebolajo, who hacked a soldier to death in London in 2013.
ASIM QURESHI : Sorry, it&#8217;s quite hard, because, you know, he&#8217;s such a—I&#8217;m really sorry, but he was such a beautiful young man, really. You know, it&#8217;s hard to imagine the trajectory, but it&#8217;s not a trajectory that&#8217;s unfamiliar with us, for us. We&#8217;ve seen Michael Adebolajo, once again, somebody that I met, you know, who came to me for help, looking to change his situation within the system. When are we going to finally learn that when we treat people as if they&#8217;re outsiders, they will inevitably feel like outsiders, and they will look for belonging elsewhere?
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s CAGE research director Asim Qureshi. Your response to this, Noam Chomsky?
NOAM CHOMSKY : He&#8217;s right. If you—the same if you take a look at those who perpetrated the crimes on Charlie Hebdo . They also have a history of oppression, violence. They come from Algerian background. The horrible French participation in the murderous war in the &#39;90s in Algeria is their immediate background. They live under—in these harshly repressed areas. And there&#39;s much more than that. So, you mentioned that information is coming out about so-called Jihadi John. You read the British press, other information is coming out, which we don&#8217;t pay much attention to. For example, The Guardian had an article a couple of weeks ago about a Yemeni boy, I think who was about 14 or so, who was murdered in a drone strike. And shortly before, they had interviewed him about his history. His parents and family went through them, were murdered in drone strikes. He watched them burn to death. We get upset about beheadings. They get upset about seeing their father burn to death in a drone strike. He said they live in a situation of constant terror, not knowing when the person 10 feet away from you is suddenly going to be blown away. That&#8217;s their lives. People like those who live in the slums around Paris or, in this case, a relatively privileged man under harsh, pretty harsh repression in England, they also know about that. We may choose not to know about it, but they know. When we talk about beheadings, they know that in the U.S.-backed Israeli attack on Gaza, at the points where the attack was most fierce, like the Shejaiya neighborhood, people weren&#8217;t just beheaded. Their bodies were torn to shreds. People came later trying to put the pieces of the bodies together to find out who they were, you know. These things happen, too. And they have an impact—all of this has an impact, along with what was just described. And if we seriously want to deal with the question, we can&#8217;t ignore that. That&#8217;s part of the background of people who are reacting this way.
AARON MATÉ: You spoke before about how the U.S. invasion set off the Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq, and out of that came ISIS . I wonder if you see a parallel in Libya, where the U.S. and NATO had a mandate to stop a potential massacre in Benghazi, but then went much further than a no-fly zone and helped topple Gaddafi. And now, four years later, we have ISIS in Libya, and they&#8217;re beheading Coptic Christians, Egypt now bombing. And with the U.S. debating this expansive war measure, Libya could be next on the U.S. target list.
NOAM CHOMSKY : Well, that&#8217;s a very important analogy. What happened is, as you say, there was a claim that there might be a massacre in Benghazi, and in response to that, there was a U.N. resolution, which had several elements. One, a call for a ceasefire and negotiations, which apparently Gaddafi accepted. Another was a no-fly zone, OK, to stop attacks on Benghazi. The three traditional imperial powers—Britain, France and the United States—immediately violated the resolution. No diplomacy, no ceasefire. They immediately became the air force of the rebel forces. And, in fact, the war itself had plenty of brutality—violent militias, attacks on Africans living in Libya, all sorts of things. The end result is just to tear Libya to shreds. By now, it&#8217;s torn between two major warring militias, many other small ones. It&#8217;s gotten to the point where they can&#8217;t even export their main export, oil. It&#8217;s just a disaster, total disaster. That&#8217;s what happens when you strike vulnerable systems, as I said, with a sledgehammer. All kind of horrible things can happen.
In the case of Iraq, it&#8217;s worth recalling that there had been an almost decade of sanctions, which were brutally destructive. We know about—we can, if we like, know about the sanctions. People prefer not to, but we can find out. There was a sort of humanitarian component of the sanctions, so-called. It was the oil-for-peace program, instituted when the reports of the sanctions were so horrendous—you know, hundreds of thousand of children dying and so on—that it was necessary for the U.S. and Britain to institute some humanitarian part. That was directed by prominent, respected international diplomats, Denis Halliday, who resigned, and Hans von Sponeck. Both Halliday and von Sponeck resigned because they called the humanitarian aspect genocidal. That&#8217;s their description. And von Sponeck published a detailed, important book on it called, I think, A Different Kind of War , or something like that, which I&#8217;ve never seen a review of or even a mention of it in the United States, which detailed, in great detail, exactly how these sanctions were devastating the civilian society, supporting Saddam, because the people had to simply huddle under the umbrella of power for survival, probably—they didn&#8217;t say this, but I&#8217;ll add it—probably saving Saddam from the fate of other dictators who the U.S. had supported and were overthrown by popular uprisings. And there&#8217;s a long list of them—Somoza, Marcos, Mobutu, Duvalier—you know, even Ceaușescu, U.S. was supporting. They were overthrown from within. Saddam wasn&#8217;t, because the civil society that might have carried that out was devastated. He had a pretty efficient rationing system people were living on for survival, but it severely harmed the civilian society. Then comes the war, you know, massive war, plenty of destruction, destruction of antiquities. There&#8217;s now, you know, properly, denunciation of ISIS for destroying antiquities. The U.S. invasion did the same thing. Millions of refugees, a horrible blow against the society.
These things have terrible consequences. Actually, there&#8217;s an interesting interview with Graham Fuller. He&#8217;s one of the leading Middle East analysts, long background in CIA , U.S. intelligence. In the interview, he says something like, &quot;The U.S. created ISIS .&quot; He hastens to add that he&#8217;s not joining with the conspiracy theories that are floating around the Middle East about how the U.S. is supporting ISIS . Of course, it&#8217;s not. But what he says is, the U.S. created ISIS in the sense that we established the background from which ISIS developed as a terrible offshoot. And we can&#8217;t overlook that.
AMY GOODMAN : MIT professor Noam Chomsky. When we come back from break, he talks about Cuba, U.S. relations with Venezuela, Edward Snowden, U.S. drones, the legacy of slavery, and a new chapter in Noam&#8217;s own life. Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: Today, part two of our discussion with Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than half a century. On Monday on Democracy Now!, Aaron Maté and I interviewed him about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Iran to Congress. Today, in part two, we look at blowback from the U.S. drone program, the legacy of slavery in the United States, the leaks of Edward Snowden, U.S. meddling in Venezuela and the thawing of U.S.-Cuba relations. We began by asking Professor Chomsky how the U.S. should respond to the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

NOAMCHOMSKY: It’s very hard to think of anything serious that can be done. I mean, it should be settled diplomatically and peacefully to the extent that that’s possible. It’s not inconceivable. I mean, there are—ISIS, it’s a horrible manifestation of hideous actions. It’s a real danger to anyone nearby. But so are other forces. And we should be getting together with Iran, which has a huge stake in the matter and is the main force involved, and with the Iraqi government, which is calling for and applauding Iranian support and trying to work out with them some arrangement which will satisfy the legitimate demands of the Sunni population, which is what ISIS is protecting and defending and gaining their support from.

They’re not coming out of nowhere. I mean, they are—one of the effects, the main effects, of the U.S. invasion of Iraq—there are many horrible effects, but one of them was to incite sectarian conflicts, that had not been there before. If you take a look at Baghdad before the invasion, Sunni and Shia lived intermingled—same neighborhoods, they intermarried. Sometimes they say that they didn’t even know if their neighbor was a Sunni or a Shia. It was like knowing what Protestant sect your neighbor belongs to. There was pretty close—it wasn’t—I’m not claiming it was—it wasn’t utopia. There were conflicts. But there was no serious conflict, so much so that Iraqis at the time predicted there would never be a conflict. Well, within a couple of years, it had turned into a violent, brutal conflict. You look at Baghdad today, it’s segregated. What’s left of the Sunni communities are isolated. The people can’t talk to their neighbors. There’s war going on all over. The ISIS is murderous and brutal. The same is true of the Shia militias which confront it. And this is now spread all over the region. There’s now a major Sunni-Shia conflict rending the region apart, tearing it to shreds.

Now, this cannot be dealt with by bombs. This is much more serious than that. It’s got to be dealt with by steps towards recovering, remedying the massive damage that was initiated by the sledgehammer smashing Iraq and has now spread. And that does require diplomatic, peaceful means dealing with people who are pretty ugly—and we’re not very pretty, either, for that matter. But this just has to be done. Exactly what steps should be taken, it’s hard to say. There are people whose lives are at stake, like the Assyrian Christians, the Yazidi and so on. Apparently, the fighting that protected the—we don’t know a lot, but it looks as though the ground fighting that protected the Yazidi, largely, was carried out by PKK, the Turkish guerrilla group that’s fighting for the Kurds in Turkey but based in northern Iraq. And they’re on the U.S. terrorist list. We can’t hope to have a strategy that deals with ISIS while opposing and attacking the group that’s fighting them, just as it doesn’t make sense to try to have a strategy that excludes Iran, the major state that’s supporting Iraq in its battle with ISIS.

AMYGOODMAN: What about the fact that so many of those who are joining ISIS now—and a lot has been made of the young people, young women and young men, who are going into Syria through Turkey. I mean, Turkey is a U.S. ally. There is a border there. They freely go back and forth.

NOAMCHOMSKY: That’s right. And it’s not just young people. One thing that’s pretty striking is that it includes people with—educated people, doctors, professionals and others. Whatever we—we may not like it, but ISIS is—the idea of the Islamic caliphate does have an appeal to large sectors of a brutalized global population, which is under severe attack everywhere, has been for a long time. And something has appeared which has an appeal to them. And that can’t be overlooked if we want to deal with the issue. We have to ask what’s the nature of the appeal, why is it there, how can we accommodate it and lead to some, if not at least amelioration of the murderous conflict, then maybe some kind of settlement. You can’t ignore these factors if you want to deal with the issue.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to ask you about more information that’s come out on the British man who is known as "Jihadi John," who appears in the Islamic State beheading videos. Mohammed Emwazi has been identified as that man by British security. They say he’s a 26-year-old born in Kuwait who moved to the U.K. as a child and studied computer science at the University of Westminster. The British group CAGE said he faced at least four years of harassment, detention, deportations, threats and attempts to recruit him by British security agencies, which prevented him from leading a normal life. Emwazi approached CAGE in 2009 after he was detained and interrogated by the British intelligence agency MI5 on what he called a safari vacation in Tanzania. In 2010, after Emwazi was barred from returning to Kuwait, he wrote, quote, "I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started. But know [sic] I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London." In 2013, a week after he was barred from Kuwait for a third time, Emwazi left home and ended up in Syria. At a news conference, CAGE research director Asim Qureshi spoke about his recollections of Emwazi and compared his case to another British man, Michael Adebolajo, who hacked a soldier to death in London in 2013.

ASIMQURESHI: Sorry, it’s quite hard, because, you know, he’s such a—I’m really sorry, but he was such a beautiful young man, really. You know, it’s hard to imagine the trajectory, but it’s not a trajectory that’s unfamiliar with us, for us. We’ve seen Michael Adebolajo, once again, somebody that I met, you know, who came to me for help, looking to change his situation within the system. When are we going to finally learn that when we treat people as if they’re outsiders, they will inevitably feel like outsiders, and they will look for belonging elsewhere?

NOAMCHOMSKY: He’s right. If you—the same if you take a look at those who perpetrated the crimes on Charlie Hebdo. They also have a history of oppression, violence. They come from Algerian background. The horrible French participation in the murderous war in the '90s in Algeria is their immediate background. They live under—in these harshly repressed areas. And there's much more than that. So, you mentioned that information is coming out about so-called Jihadi John. You read the British press, other information is coming out, which we don’t pay much attention to. For example, The Guardian had an article a couple of weeks ago about a Yemeni boy, I think who was about 14 or so, who was murdered in a drone strike. And shortly before, they had interviewed him about his history. His parents and family went through them, were murdered in drone strikes. He watched them burn to death. We get upset about beheadings. They get upset about seeing their father burn to death in a drone strike. He said they live in a situation of constant terror, not knowing when the person 10 feet away from you is suddenly going to be blown away. That’s their lives. People like those who live in the slums around Paris or, in this case, a relatively privileged man under harsh, pretty harsh repression in England, they also know about that. We may choose not to know about it, but they know. When we talk about beheadings, they know that in the U.S.-backed Israeli attack on Gaza, at the points where the attack was most fierce, like the Shejaiya neighborhood, people weren’t just beheaded. Their bodies were torn to shreds. People came later trying to put the pieces of the bodies together to find out who they were, you know. These things happen, too. And they have an impact—all of this has an impact, along with what was just described. And if we seriously want to deal with the question, we can’t ignore that. That’s part of the background of people who are reacting this way.

AARON MATÉ: You spoke before about how the U.S. invasion set off the Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq, and out of that came ISIS. I wonder if you see a parallel in Libya, where the U.S. and NATO had a mandate to stop a potential massacre in Benghazi, but then went much further than a no-fly zone and helped topple Gaddafi. And now, four years later, we have ISIS in Libya, and they’re beheading Coptic Christians, Egypt now bombing. And with the U.S. debating this expansive war measure, Libya could be next on the U.S. target list.

NOAMCHOMSKY: Well, that’s a very important analogy. What happened is, as you say, there was a claim that there might be a massacre in Benghazi, and in response to that, there was a U.N. resolution, which had several elements. One, a call for a ceasefire and negotiations, which apparently Gaddafi accepted. Another was a no-fly zone, OK, to stop attacks on Benghazi. The three traditional imperial powers—Britain, France and the United States—immediately violated the resolution. No diplomacy, no ceasefire. They immediately became the air force of the rebel forces. And, in fact, the war itself had plenty of brutality—violent militias, attacks on Africans living in Libya, all sorts of things. The end result is just to tear Libya to shreds. By now, it’s torn between two major warring militias, many other small ones. It’s gotten to the point where they can’t even export their main export, oil. It’s just a disaster, total disaster. That’s what happens when you strike vulnerable systems, as I said, with a sledgehammer. All kind of horrible things can happen.

In the case of Iraq, it’s worth recalling that there had been an almost decade of sanctions, which were brutally destructive. We know about—we can, if we like, know about the sanctions. People prefer not to, but we can find out. There was a sort of humanitarian component of the sanctions, so-called. It was the oil-for-peace program, instituted when the reports of the sanctions were so horrendous—you know, hundreds of thousand of children dying and so on—that it was necessary for the U.S. and Britain to institute some humanitarian part. That was directed by prominent, respected international diplomats, Denis Halliday, who resigned, and Hans von Sponeck. Both Halliday and von Sponeck resigned because they called the humanitarian aspect genocidal. That’s their description. And von Sponeck published a detailed, important book on it called, I think, A Different Kind of War, or something like that, which I’ve never seen a review of or even a mention of it in the United States, which detailed, in great detail, exactly how these sanctions were devastating the civilian society, supporting Saddam, because the people had to simply huddle under the umbrella of power for survival, probably—they didn’t say this, but I’ll add it—probably saving Saddam from the fate of other dictators who the U.S. had supported and were overthrown by popular uprisings. And there’s a long list of them—Somoza, Marcos, Mobutu, Duvalier—you know, even Ceaușescu, U.S. was supporting. They were overthrown from within. Saddam wasn’t, because the civil society that might have carried that out was devastated. He had a pretty efficient rationing system people were living on for survival, but it severely harmed the civilian society. Then comes the war, you know, massive war, plenty of destruction, destruction of antiquities. There’s now, you know, properly, denunciation of ISIS for destroying antiquities. The U.S. invasion did the same thing. Millions of refugees, a horrible blow against the society.

These things have terrible consequences. Actually, there’s an interesting interview with Graham Fuller. He’s one of the leading Middle East analysts, long background in CIA, U.S. intelligence. In the interview, he says something like, "The U.S. created ISIS." He hastens to add that he’s not joining with the conspiracy theories that are floating around the Middle East about how the U.S. is supporting ISIS. Of course, it’s not. But what he says is, the U.S. created ISIS in the sense that we established the background from which ISIS developed as a terrible offshoot. And we can’t overlook that.

AMYGOODMAN:MIT professor Noam Chomsky. When we come back from break, he talks about Cuba, U.S. relations with Venezuela, Edward Snowden, U.S. drones, the legacy of slavery, and a new chapter in Noam’s own life. Stay with us.

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Tue, 03 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0500Noam Chomsky on How the Iraq War Birthed ISIS & Why U.S. Policy Undermines the Fight Against Ithttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/2/noam_chomsky_on_how_the_iraq
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-02:en/story/80439d AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Noam Chomsky is our guest for the hour, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author of over a hundred books, MIT professor emeritus. Aaron?
AARON MATÉ: Yes. Noam, I wanted to ask you about ISIS . The big news is that Iraq is planning a major offensive to retake Mosul. It&#8217;s currently launching strikes to recapture Tikrit with U.S. support. My question is about the effectiveness of the U.S. strategy. To what extent is the U.S. constrained by its own policies in terms of the effectiveness of defeating ISIS , constrains in terms of its ties to Saudi Arabia and its refusal to engage with Iran and groups like Hezbollah, which have been effective in fighting ISIS ?
NOAM CHOMSKY : Patrick Cockburn, who has done by far the best reporting on this, describes it as an Alice in Wonderland strategy. The U.S. wants to destroy ISIS , but it&#8217;s opposing every force that&#8217;s fighting ISIS . So, the main state that&#8217;s opposed to ISIS is Iran. They support the Iraqi government, the Shiite government. But Iran is, you know, on our enemies list. Probably the main ground forces fighting ISIS are the PKK and its allies, which are on the U.S. terrorist list. That&#8217;s both in Iraq and in Syria. Saudi Arabia, our major ally, along with Israel, is both traditionally, for a long time, the main funder of ISIS and similar groups—not necessarily the government; rich Saudis, other people in the emirates—not only the funder, but they&#8217;re the ideological source. Saudi Arabia is committed, is dominated by an extremist fundamentalist version of Islam: Wahhabi doctrine. And ISIS is an extremist offshoot of the Wahhabi doctrine. Saudi Arabia is a missionary state. It establishes schools, mosques, spreading its radical Islamic version. So, they&#8217;re our ally. Our enemies are those who are fighting ISIS . And it&#8217;s more complex.
ISIS is a monstrosity. There&#8217;s not much doubt about that. It didn&#8217;t come from nowhere. It&#8217;s one of the results of the U.S. hitting a very vulnerable society—Iraq—with a sledgehammer, which elicited sectarian conflicts that had not existed. They became very violent. The U.S. violence made it worse. We&#8217;re all familiar with the crimes. Out of this came lots of violent, murderous forces. ISIS is one. But the Shiite militias are not that different. They&#8217;re carrying out—they&#8217;re the kind of the—when they say the Iraqi army is attacking, it&#8217;s probably mostly the Shiite militias with the Iraqi army in the background. I mean, the way the Iraqi army collapsed is an astonishing military fact. This is an army of, I think, 350,000 people, heavily armed by the United States and trained by the United States for 10 years. A couple of thousand guerrillas showed up, and they all ran away. The generals ran away first. And the soldiers didn&#8217;t know to do. They ran away after them.
AMY GOODMAN : We have 20 seconds.
NOAM CHOMSKY : Hmm?
AMY GOODMAN : We have 20 seconds.
NOAM CHOMSKY : Yeah. Well, now, it&#8217;s basically—the effect, it&#8217;s hard to see how Iraq can even be held together at this point. It&#8217;s been devastated by U.S. sanctions, the war, the atrocities that followed from it. The current policy, whatever it is, is not very likely to even patch up, put band-aids on the cancer.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to have to leave it there, but we&#8217;ll continue this discussion tomorrow on Democracy Now! Our guest, Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Noam Chomsky is our guest for the hour, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author of over a hundred books, MIT professor emeritus. Aaron?

AARON MATÉ: Yes. Noam, I wanted to ask you about ISIS. The big news is that Iraq is planning a major offensive to retake Mosul. It’s currently launching strikes to recapture Tikrit with U.S. support. My question is about the effectiveness of the U.S. strategy. To what extent is the U.S. constrained by its own policies in terms of the effectiveness of defeating ISIS, constrains in terms of its ties to Saudi Arabia and its refusal to engage with Iran and groups like Hezbollah, which have been effective in fighting ISIS?

NOAMCHOMSKY: Patrick Cockburn, who has done by far the best reporting on this, describes it as an Alice in Wonderland strategy. The U.S. wants to destroy ISIS, but it’s opposing every force that’s fighting ISIS. So, the main state that’s opposed to ISIS is Iran. They support the Iraqi government, the Shiite government. But Iran is, you know, on our enemies list. Probably the main ground forces fighting ISIS are the PKK and its allies, which are on the U.S. terrorist list. That’s both in Iraq and in Syria. Saudi Arabia, our major ally, along with Israel, is both traditionally, for a long time, the main funder of ISIS and similar groups—not necessarily the government; rich Saudis, other people in the emirates—not only the funder, but they’re the ideological source. Saudi Arabia is committed, is dominated by an extremist fundamentalist version of Islam: Wahhabi doctrine. And ISIS is an extremist offshoot of the Wahhabi doctrine. Saudi Arabia is a missionary state. It establishes schools, mosques, spreading its radical Islamic version. So, they’re our ally. Our enemies are those who are fighting ISIS. And it’s more complex.

ISIS is a monstrosity. There’s not much doubt about that. It didn’t come from nowhere. It’s one of the results of the U.S. hitting a very vulnerable society—Iraq—with a sledgehammer, which elicited sectarian conflicts that had not existed. They became very violent. The U.S. violence made it worse. We’re all familiar with the crimes. Out of this came lots of violent, murderous forces. ISIS is one. But the Shiite militias are not that different. They’re carrying out—they’re the kind of the—when they say the Iraqi army is attacking, it’s probably mostly the Shiite militias with the Iraqi army in the background. I mean, the way the Iraqi army collapsed is an astonishing military fact. This is an army of, I think, 350,000 people, heavily armed by the United States and trained by the United States for 10 years. A couple of thousand guerrillas showed up, and they all ran away. The generals ran away first. And the soldiers didn’t know to do. They ran away after them.

AMYGOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.

NOAMCHOMSKY: Hmm?

AMYGOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.

NOAMCHOMSKY: Yeah. Well, now, it’s basically—the effect, it’s hard to see how Iraq can even be held together at this point. It’s been devastated by U.S. sanctions, the war, the atrocities that followed from it. The current policy, whatever it is, is not very likely to even patch up, put band-aids on the cancer.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but we’ll continue this discussion tomorrow on Democracy Now! Our guest, Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0500Antiquities Scholar: Islamic State's Destruction of Museum & Library is Cultural & Ethnic Cleansinghttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/27/antiquities_scholar_islamic_states_destruction_of
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-27:en/story/7e6532 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Iraq, where video has surfaced showing militants from the Islamic State destroying ancient artifacts at a museum in the Iraqi city of Mosul. Men are seen toppling statues and using sledgehammers and drills to destroy the artifacts. The Guardian reports one of the statues destroyed was a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 9th century B.C.
AMY GOODMAN : On Thurday, UNESCO , the cultural arm of the United Nations, called for the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on protecting Iraq&#8217;s cultural heritage. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said, quote, &quot;I condemn this as a deliberate attack against Iraq&#8217;s millennial history and culture, and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred.&quot;
UNESCO has also warned about the self-proclaimed Islamic State generating income from the looting and smuggling of cultural heritage items. Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council banned all trade in antiquities from wartorn Syria and reaffirmed a ban on Iraqi artifact sales from about a decade ago.
Joining us here in New York is Zainab Bahrani, professor of Near Eastern and East Mediterranean art and archeology at Columbia University. She has worked extensively in Iraq, including periods as senior adviser to Iraq&#8217;s Ministry of Culture and, back in 2004 or so, a UNESCO consultant.
We welcome you, Professor Bahrani, to Democracy Now! Talk about what is happening, the significance—let&#8217;s start with the Mosul museum.
ZAINAB BAHRANI : Well, the Mosul museum is a major museum in the Middle East. It&#8217;s one of the largest museums in the area, and it has a remarkable collection of finds that date back to the Neolithic era and continue into the Islamic period, so covering thousands of years, going back to about 8,000 B.C.
AMY GOODMAN : What was your reaction when we saw the video yesterday?
ZAINAB BAHRANI : Well, I think we, all of us who are in the field, were completely horrified. I mean, of course we expected that something like this might happen, ever since ISIS took over the area, took over Mosul. But to see it actually happen was devastating.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what is their rationale or their reasons for doing this?
ZAINAB BAHRANI : Well, the rationale seems to be, from what they are saying on the video, that these are idols, and therefore they are false gods and should be destroyed. But, to me, this actually doesn&#8217;t make that much sense, since, of course, a lot of this cultural heritage and these antiquities have been visible since the seventh century A.D., and they have been there unharmed. So, it&#8217;s not really clear why now this should happen.
AMY GOODMAN : On the one hand, the rationale of it being heretical, right, the false idols—
ZAINAB BAHRANI : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : —and on the other hand, it&#8217;s believed—I mean, I can&#8217;t confirm this myself independently—that the militants have sold the ancient artifacts on the black market?
ZAINAB BAHRANI : Well, it seems to be that there is a great deal of selling of antiquities by ISIL . And this has been confirmed by certain people who are watching the trade in antiquities. So they are selling antiquities. One of the arguments is that the objects they destroyed yesterday were the larger pieces that could not be moved out and sold, so they were more likely to be able to destroy them.
I think that a great deal of the discussion here in the West, and perhaps throughout the world, has focused on the looting rather than the issue of cultural cleansing. The destruction of monuments on site is also something to be concerned about. I mean, the looting for the antiquities market, which is an illicit international market, is very important to consider, because this is very destructive. But the blowing up of shrines and monuments on site is really horrendous, and this is a form of cultural cleansing, certainly, but also ethnic cleansing.
AMY GOODMAN : Explain.
ZAINAB BAHRANI : Well, it&#8217;s a form of ethnic cleansing because this is a region of the world—Mesopotamia has always been a multicultural, mutli-ethnic, multilinguistic and multireligious community, the entirety of the country. And what&#8217;s happening now is that diversity is being wiped out. So when you wipe out people&#8217;s monuments and heritage, you erase any record of their ever having been there. And it&#8217;s a way of creating a terra nulla , if you will, a kind of an empty land that you can conquer and then claim that there was nothing there before. So it&#8217;s a general erasure and rewriting of history of Mesopotamia.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, UNESCO&#8217;s director-general expressed outrage following the Islamic State&#8217;s attack on the Mosul museum. Irina Bokova said, quote, &quot;This attack is far more than a cultural tragedy—this is also a security issue as it fuels sectarianism, violent extremism and conflict in Iraq. ... The systematic destruction of iconic components of Iraq&#8217;s rich and diverse heritage that we have been witnessing over the past months is intolerable and it must stop immediately.&quot; And, of course, Iraq went—Iraq went through similar problems—not at this scale—during the—in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the disorder that followed, when there was also some destruction and looting that occurred.
ZAINAB BAHRANI : Well, I think that&#8217;s right. And I think too many people have forgotten that all of this actually began a long time ago. Of course, the scale now is far greater, and the slaughter that&#8217;s taking place of human beings is truly horrendous, but the rewriting of Iraq&#8217;s history and the erasure of its past actually started with the 2003 war, if not even with the earlier one. So there has been a great deal of destruction of heritage sites, and the attempt to say that this is ingrained in the culture. I think one large problem is that pundits here in the West often say, &quot;Well, these acts are grounded, are based, in the historical reality of Iraq, of Mesopotamia. This is a kind of an internal fight between Shia and Sunni peoples, and we should just mind our own business and leave it alone.&quot; But it seems to me that this is completely misguided, because what we are saying is that this is based in history. We&#8217;re trying to say—the pundits are trying to say that this is based in a historical reality, when it&#8217;s not. It&#8217;s a complete rewriting of what was the historical reality. Now, let&#8217;s take, for example, the idea of the resurrection of a medieval Islamic state. So, of course, here, everybody says, &quot;Well, they are truly barbaric. They are medieval.&quot; But everybody who has read history knows that in the Abbasid empire, the caliphs of the Abbasids valued scholarship. They translated Greek classical texts. They loved the arts and promoted arts and architecture. So, it&#8217;s actually quite false to say that in the Middle Ages they were opposed to these things.
AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to ask you, Professor Bahrani, going back to 2003, the day after Baghdad fell, that famous scene of the looters coming from the Iraqi museum—
ZAINAB BAHRANI : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : —and the criticism of the U.S. for not protecting the museum. Going back to that time, declaring that freedom is &quot;untidy,&quot; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the looting in Iraq was a result of &quot;pent-up feelings&quot; of oppression, that it would subside as Iraqis adjusted to life without Saddam Hussein. He said, &quot;Freedom&#8217;s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They&#8217;re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s going to happen here.&quot; Looting, he said, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. Rumsfeld said, &quot;Stuff happens.&quot;
ZAINAB BAHRANI : I remember his statements very well. I also remember that he was quite taken aback that there was more than one vase in the entire country. And he seemed to have not realized that Iraq is Mesopotamia, the cradle of the world&#8217;s civilization. And how he did not know that, I&#8217;m really not sure. But he was clearly very mistaken.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you talk about the historical legacy of Muslims protecting antiquities, knowledge, philosophy, science?
ZAINAB BAHRANI : Absolutely. I mean, it&#8217;s not my specific area of expertise, because I&#8217;m a specialist in the pre-Islamic past, but I know enough to know that this heritage has always been there, that Islamic geographers and travelers and historians have written about places like Babylon and Nineveh in the Middle Ages. The caliphs, the Abbasid caliphs especially, supported the scholarship of the ancient Greek classical texts and philosophy and the sciences, in a way that is truly unparalleled not just in the history of Iraq, but, I would say, in a great part of the world. It&#8217;s one of the high points of the world&#8217;s history of scholarly knowledge.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what&#8217;s been the reaction in the rest of the—throughout the rest of the Middle East, of other governments and civil society organizations after they&#8217;ve heard about this from yesterday?
ZAINAB BAHRANI : I think that most of the news that I&#8217;ve heard from all over the Middle East is that people are horrified, that everybody is taken aback, because nobody was expecting this extent of just senseless destruction. Of course, this is a very small thing to consider after the mass slaughter, the kidnapping, the rapes, the torture, the daily murdering. So, this is really very much just a kind of a last straw on top of a terrible annihilation of people.
But what I want to stress is that the destruction of this sculpture, of the heritage sites and the ancient Assyrian and Hadrian sculpture that we saw destroyed in the video, that this is not just about the past. This is about a destruction and an erasure of the history of the people of Iraq, as a way to say that they never belonged here.
AMY GOODMAN : We want to thank you so much for being with us, Zainab Bahrani, professor of Near Eastern and East Mediterranean art and archaeology at Columbia University. Her most recent book is called The Infinite Image: Art, Time and the Aesthetic Dimension in Antiquity .
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we&#8217;re going to Pasco, Washington. It was there that police killed Antonio Zambrano-Montes. Cellphone video shows him putting up his hands. He was unarmed. Stay with us. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Iraq, where video has surfaced showing militants from the Islamic State destroying ancient artifacts at a museum in the Iraqi city of Mosul. Men are seen toppling statues and using sledgehammers and drills to destroy the artifacts. The Guardian reports one of the statues destroyed was a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 9th century B.C.

AMYGOODMAN: On Thurday, UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, called for the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on protecting Iraq’s cultural heritage. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said, quote, "I condemn this as a deliberate attack against Iraq’s millennial history and culture, and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred."

UNESCO has also warned about the self-proclaimed Islamic State generating income from the looting and smuggling of cultural heritage items. Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council banned all trade in antiquities from wartorn Syria and reaffirmed a ban on Iraqi artifact sales from about a decade ago.

Joining us here in New York is Zainab Bahrani, professor of Near Eastern and East Mediterranean art and archeology at Columbia University. She has worked extensively in Iraq, including periods as senior adviser to Iraq’s Ministry of Culture and, back in 2004 or so, a UNESCO consultant.

We welcome you, Professor Bahrani, to Democracy Now! Talk about what is happening, the significance—let’s start with the Mosul museum.

ZAINABBAHRANI: Well, the Mosul museum is a major museum in the Middle East. It’s one of the largest museums in the area, and it has a remarkable collection of finds that date back to the Neolithic era and continue into the Islamic period, so covering thousands of years, going back to about 8,000 B.C.

AMYGOODMAN: What was your reaction when we saw the video yesterday?

ZAINABBAHRANI: Well, I think we, all of us who are in the field, were completely horrified. I mean, of course we expected that something like this might happen, ever since ISIS took over the area, took over Mosul. But to see it actually happen was devastating.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what is their rationale or their reasons for doing this?

ZAINABBAHRANI: Well, the rationale seems to be, from what they are saying on the video, that these are idols, and therefore they are false gods and should be destroyed. But, to me, this actually doesn’t make that much sense, since, of course, a lot of this cultural heritage and these antiquities have been visible since the seventh century A.D., and they have been there unharmed. So, it’s not really clear why now this should happen.

AMYGOODMAN: On the one hand, the rationale of it being heretical, right, the false idols—

ZAINABBAHRANI: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: —and on the other hand, it’s believed—I mean, I can’t confirm this myself independently—that the militants have sold the ancient artifacts on the black market?

ZAINABBAHRANI: Well, it seems to be that there is a great deal of selling of antiquities by ISIL. And this has been confirmed by certain people who are watching the trade in antiquities. So they are selling antiquities. One of the arguments is that the objects they destroyed yesterday were the larger pieces that could not be moved out and sold, so they were more likely to be able to destroy them.

I think that a great deal of the discussion here in the West, and perhaps throughout the world, has focused on the looting rather than the issue of cultural cleansing. The destruction of monuments on site is also something to be concerned about. I mean, the looting for the antiquities market, which is an illicit international market, is very important to consider, because this is very destructive. But the blowing up of shrines and monuments on site is really horrendous, and this is a form of cultural cleansing, certainly, but also ethnic cleansing.

AMYGOODMAN: Explain.

ZAINABBAHRANI: Well, it’s a form of ethnic cleansing because this is a region of the world—Mesopotamia has always been a multicultural, mutli-ethnic, multilinguistic and multireligious community, the entirety of the country. And what’s happening now is that diversity is being wiped out. So when you wipe out people’s monuments and heritage, you erase any record of their ever having been there. And it’s a way of creating a terra nulla, if you will, a kind of an empty land that you can conquer and then claim that there was nothing there before. So it’s a general erasure and rewriting of history of Mesopotamia.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, UNESCO’s director-general expressed outrage following the Islamic State’s attack on the Mosul museum. Irina Bokova said, quote, "This attack is far more than a cultural tragedy—this is also a security issue as it fuels sectarianism, violent extremism and conflict in Iraq. ... The systematic destruction of iconic components of Iraq’s rich and diverse heritage that we have been witnessing over the past months is intolerable and it must stop immediately." And, of course, Iraq went—Iraq went through similar problems—not at this scale—during the—in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the disorder that followed, when there was also some destruction and looting that occurred.

ZAINABBAHRANI: Well, I think that’s right. And I think too many people have forgotten that all of this actually began a long time ago. Of course, the scale now is far greater, and the slaughter that’s taking place of human beings is truly horrendous, but the rewriting of Iraq’s history and the erasure of its past actually started with the 2003 war, if not even with the earlier one. So there has been a great deal of destruction of heritage sites, and the attempt to say that this is ingrained in the culture. I think one large problem is that pundits here in the West often say, "Well, these acts are grounded, are based, in the historical reality of Iraq, of Mesopotamia. This is a kind of an internal fight between Shia and Sunni peoples, and we should just mind our own business and leave it alone." But it seems to me that this is completely misguided, because what we are saying is that this is based in history. We’re trying to say—the pundits are trying to say that this is based in a historical reality, when it’s not. It’s a complete rewriting of what was the historical reality. Now, let’s take, for example, the idea of the resurrection of a medieval Islamic state. So, of course, here, everybody says, "Well, they are truly barbaric. They are medieval." But everybody who has read history knows that in the Abbasid empire, the caliphs of the Abbasids valued scholarship. They translated Greek classical texts. They loved the arts and promoted arts and architecture. So, it’s actually quite false to say that in the Middle Ages they were opposed to these things.

AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Professor Bahrani, going back to 2003, the day after Baghdad fell, that famous scene of the looters coming from the Iraqi museum—

ZAINABBAHRANI: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: —and the criticism of the U.S. for not protecting the museum. Going back to that time, declaring that freedom is "untidy," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the looting in Iraq was a result of "pent-up feelings" of oppression, that it would subside as Iraqis adjusted to life without Saddam Hussein. He said, "Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here." Looting, he said, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. Rumsfeld said, "Stuff happens."

ZAINABBAHRANI: I remember his statements very well. I also remember that he was quite taken aback that there was more than one vase in the entire country. And he seemed to have not realized that Iraq is Mesopotamia, the cradle of the world’s civilization. And how he did not know that, I’m really not sure. But he was clearly very mistaken.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you talk about the historical legacy of Muslims protecting antiquities, knowledge, philosophy, science?

ZAINABBAHRANI: Absolutely. I mean, it’s not my specific area of expertise, because I’m a specialist in the pre-Islamic past, but I know enough to know that this heritage has always been there, that Islamic geographers and travelers and historians have written about places like Babylon and Nineveh in the Middle Ages. The caliphs, the Abbasid caliphs especially, supported the scholarship of the ancient Greek classical texts and philosophy and the sciences, in a way that is truly unparalleled not just in the history of Iraq, but, I would say, in a great part of the world. It’s one of the high points of the world’s history of scholarly knowledge.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what’s been the reaction in the rest of the—throughout the rest of the Middle East, of other governments and civil society organizations after they’ve heard about this from yesterday?

ZAINABBAHRANI: I think that most of the news that I’ve heard from all over the Middle East is that people are horrified, that everybody is taken aback, because nobody was expecting this extent of just senseless destruction. Of course, this is a very small thing to consider after the mass slaughter, the kidnapping, the rapes, the torture, the daily murdering. So, this is really very much just a kind of a last straw on top of a terrible annihilation of people.

But what I want to stress is that the destruction of this sculpture, of the heritage sites and the ancient Assyrian and Hadrian sculpture that we saw destroyed in the video, that this is not just about the past. This is about a destruction and an erasure of the history of the people of Iraq, as a way to say that they never belonged here.

AMYGOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Zainab Bahrani, professor of Near Eastern and East Mediterranean art and archaeology at Columbia University. Her most recent book is called The Infinite Image: Art, Time and the Aesthetic Dimension in Antiquity.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to Pasco, Washington. It was there that police killed Antonio Zambrano-Montes. Cellphone video shows him putting up his hands. He was unarmed. Stay with us.

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Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500Who Bankrolls the Islamic State? Private Donors in Gulf Oil States Cited as Key to ISIS Successhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/26/who_is_bankrolling_the_islamic_state
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-26:en/story/84bf03 NERMEEN SHAIKH : We turn now to the Middle East. Militants from the self-proclaimed Islamic State have reportedly abducted at least 220 people from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria during a three-day offensive. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Islamic State has seized 10 villages near the city of Hasaka.
Meanwhile, the BBC and Washington Post have revealed the identity of the British man nicknamed &quot;Jihadi John,&quot; who&#8217;s been featured in several Islamic State beheading videos. The outlets say the Kuwaiti-born man is Mohammed Emwazi, who lived in west London and was known to British security services. He first appeared in a video last August when he allegedly killed the American journalist James Foley.
In other news, two U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have reportedly killed over three dozen people in Iraq, including at least 20 civilians. Hospital sources told Reuters a strike near the Syrian border killed nine civilians and 17 Islamic State militants, while a separate bombing west of Baghdad killed 11 civilians and six militants. The Pentagon has also announced a shipment of 10,000 U.S. M16 rifles and other military supplies to Iraq this week, as U.S. troops train Iraqi forces for an operation this spring to try to retake Iraq&#8217;s second-biggest city, Mosul, from Islamic State militants.
AMY GOODMAN : Meanwhile, UNESCO is condemning the Islamic State for destroying the Mosul public library, which housed more than 8,000 rare books and manuscripts. UNESCO described the incident as, quote, &quot;one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history.&quot; Earlier today, video was posted online that appears to show members of the so-called Islamic State smashing ancient artifacts inside a Mosul museum. The video shows men toppling statues and using sledgehammers and drills to destroy the artifacts. The Guardian reports one of the statues destroyed was a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 9th century B.C.
We go now to Iraq, where we&#8217;re joined by Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent . His latest book is titled The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution . One of his recent articles from Iraq is headlined &quot;Private Donors from Gulf Oil States Helping to Bankroll Salaries of Up to 100,000 ISIS Fighters.&quot; Last year, he received the Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year Award in England. He joins us now from Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Why don&#8217;t we go right to the headline of that piece, Patrick? Talk about who is funding the self-proclaimed Islamic State?
PATRICK COCKBURN : It looks as though the Islamic State has much more money than it ought to have. It&#8217;s raised certainly 100,000, and getting on over 200,000, soldiers. They&#8217;re all being paid. It&#8217;s introduced conscription. It recently lowered the age of conscription below 18. If you join up, you don&#8217;t get much. You get $400 a month. If you&#8217;re a foreign fighter, you&#8217;ll get $800 a month and your keep. But this is a pretty large army they&#8217;re putting in the field, and they don&#8217;t have many sources of revenue. They have some oil. They have some taxes. So, there&#8217;s a great big gap there, which senior Kurdish officials and officials in Baghdad have told me they&#8217;re convinced come from private donors in the oil states of the Gulf. That&#8217;s the only real explanation for that.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, Patrick Cockburn, you&#8217;ve been talking to people who have been fleeing Mosul, the city that&#8217;s now entirely controlled by the Islamic State. Could you explain what people have been saying about what conditions are like there?
PATRICK COCKBURN : The conditions are pretty grim. There&#8217;s a shortage of electricity. There&#8217;s a shortage of clean water. That&#8217;s so bad that lots of people are in hospital with various complaints, illnesses, because of eating dirty water. There&#8217;s executions. Women forced to wear the niqab, so everything is covered, but one woman whose eyes weren&#8217;t quite covered was taken to a police station and was forced to bite on a sort of donkey or horse&#8217;s bit, that you put in the mouth of a horse, and to bite so hard until there was blood all over her mouth, and she had to go to hospital. So, it&#8217;s pretty vicious.
But one should also say two things. One, that the Sunni Arabs in Mosul are very frightened of ISIS , what they call DAESH , of ISIS , but they&#8217;re also very frightened of the idea of the Iraqi army or the Shia militias capturing Mosul. So, they don&#8217;t really know which way to go. I was talking this morning to some people in a refugee camp here in Erbil who had left Mosul because their parents had been in the Iraqi police force. And what happened was that they had fled Mosul, but then ISIS goes to their houses and blows them up and then puts the video of the explosion on the social media, so the—saying this is a message to even people who have fled, that they&#8217;re blowing up their houses.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : So, Patrick Cockburn, given the brutality that you&#8217;re describing, why is it that people are, in some cases, as you say, equally scared of the Iraqi military taking over?
PATRICK COCKBURN : Because every place that the Shia militia and the—it&#8217;s mostly—the main fighting force of the Baghdad government at the moment is not the Iraqi army. The Iraqi army has actually failed to take back any city in Iraq or town in Iraq since the beginning of last year, since Fallujah fell to ISIS . But the Shia militia, that probably have about 120,000 men—the Iraqi army probably has about 40,000 to 50,000—where they take over cities or towns, they haven&#8217;t taken many, but were they have taken them over, or villages, they treat all the inhabitants, if they&#8217;re Sunni Arabs, as if they were members of ISIS . It doesn&#8217;t matter if these people are completely opposed to ISIS : They&#8217;re still treated as members of ISIS . So the young men disappear. In some cases, they&#8217;re killed. In some cases, they&#8217;re tortured or put in prison. So, houses are burned. People are driven out.
And there&#8217;s one other point, a very important one, I&#8217;d like to make, which I don&#8217;t think people have taken on board. As you know, that the U.S. government, the Pentagon and the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, have said there&#8217;s going to be an offensive to capture Mosul. But the major relief organizations, the World Food Program, believe that if there&#8217;s an attack on Mosul, there&#8217;s going to be an exodus of up to a million refugees, of basically the Sunni Arabs who live in Mosul, that they&#8217;re going to flee the city when airstrikes intensify and they believe it&#8217;s going to come under attack. At the moment, they couldn&#8217;t get into the Kurdish region. They&#8217;re banned. So they&#8217;re all going to be on the road. So, they&#8217;re pre-positioning supplies for one of the biggest exodus of refugees that we&#8217;ve seen, I don&#8217;t know for how long. But it&#8217;s going to be massive. There&#8217;s going to be terrible suffering, and many will die.
AMY GOODMAN : Already the self-proclaimed Islamic State controls a swath of land that covers millions and millions of people. Is the Islamic State going to last? And also, if you could respond to this latest identification, supposedly, of the man that has been called &quot;Jihadi John,&quot; who stands in the video as he was about to execute, for example, the American journalist James Foley—the Kuwaiti-born Mohammed Emwazi. British security said that they were following him. The significance of this? Three arrests in Brooklyn—these young people were supposedly going to join up with Islamic State in Syria. The three girls in Britain, the young women who supposedly have gone to join. Can you put all of this together?
PATRICK COCKBURN : Yeah, I mean, there are about or said to be 20,000 foreign jihadis who have gone to the Islamic State. One of the amazing things is that they&#8217;re still quite easily able to cross the Turkish frontier into Syria to—into the Islamic State, despite the fact that Turkey is meant to be part of the coalition to eliminate the Islamic State. But there&#8217;s a 500-mile border between Syria and Turkey, and it still seems to be generally open.
Now, when these foreigners arrive in the Islamic State, they&#8217;re often not much good as fighters, because those from western Europe and America don&#8217;t speak Arabic. Even those that do are not professional soldiers. So they often become suicide bombers, or they&#8217;re given particularly sort of high-profile jobs for execution and so forth.
But the Islamic State is very obsessed, almost, with the idea of dominating the news agenda, and it doesn&#8217;t really matter how they do it. So they know that if you have a Japanese hostage and you demand $200 million ransom, that that&#8217;s going to be leading the news. For a long time, cutting off people&#8217;s heads led the news. Then that—people became used to that, so they burn to death this Jordanian pilot in a cage, knowing again that will dominate the news, will be assertion of their strength. And they do that particularly when they&#8217;ve had a military setback. When things aren&#8217;t going too well on the battlefront, they want the news to be dominated by some assertion of power on their part, which may be a hideous atrocity, usually is, but they feel they&#8217;ve achieved their aim if that&#8217;s what everybody&#8217;s talking about. They said at one moment on their social media that media is half jihad. So it&#8217;s something they do very consciously, and it&#8217;s something they use, particularly foreigners entering the Islamic State, as a method of publicity.
AMY GOODMAN : And will they last? Patrick Cockburn, will they last, do you think, Islamic State? And what do you think should be done?
PATRICK COCKBURN : Will they last? Well, at the moment—last year, they had a 100-day campaign in which they captured an area which is larger than Great Britain. They defeated the Iraqi army. They defeated the—inflicted defeats on the Syrian army, massive defeats on the Kurds, the Iraqi Kurds, on almost everybody else. Since then, they haven&#8217;t been quite so successful against the Syrian Kurds and others, but they control pretty well the same area. And they&#8217;re recruiting vast numbers of people. I was at the battlefront here west of Erbil yesterday, and I was talking to a commander. And although he said that ISIS was losing a lot of men in attacks they had been making, they&#8217;ve still been able to recruit people and recruit people from the local area. I think, abroad, people get the impression somehow it&#8217;s all foreign jihadis. Actually, it isn&#8217;t. It&#8217;s mostly Syrians and Iraqis. And there are at least six or seven million people within the confines of the Islamic State. And if you&#8217;re calling up all the young men, you can put a very large army into the field.
Now, to defeat them, we have the Iraqi army here. But as I said earlier, the Iraqi army has not recaptured a single city or town since January last year. So talk of them defeating the Islamic State, of taking Mosul, taking these other cities, looks pretty optimistic. In Syria, the Syrian Kurds are fighting pretty hard. They&#8217;ve been advancing. That&#8217;s one of the reasons that these poor Assyrian Christians have been kidnapped by Islamic State. They&#8217;re supported by U.S. airstrikes. But that only really happens where there are a lot of Kurds in Syria, which is not that big. In the rest of Syria, it&#8217;s very noticeable the U.S. airstrikes are not against the Islamic State where it is combating the Syrian army. So, the pressure is there, but it&#8217;s not sufficient to defeat the Islamic State, to my mind. And the Islamic State&#8217;s many enemies are all there, but they&#8217;re disunited, and they distrust and hate each other almost as much, or if not more, than they hate the Islamic State.
AMY GOODMAN : Patrick Cockburn, we want to thank you for being with us, Middle East correspondent for The Independent . His latest book, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution . We&#8217;ll link to your article , &quot;Private Donors from Gulf Oil States Helping to Bankroll Salaries of Up to 100,000 ISIS Fighters.&quot; NERMEENSHAIKH: We turn now to the Middle East. Militants from the self-proclaimed Islamic State have reportedly abducted at least 220 people from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria during a three-day offensive. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Islamic State has seized 10 villages near the city of Hasaka.

Meanwhile, the BBC and Washington Post have revealed the identity of the British man nicknamed "Jihadi John," who’s been featured in several Islamic State beheading videos. The outlets say the Kuwaiti-born man is Mohammed Emwazi, who lived in west London and was known to British security services. He first appeared in a video last August when he allegedly killed the American journalist James Foley.

In other news, two U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have reportedly killed over three dozen people in Iraq, including at least 20 civilians. Hospital sources told Reuters a strike near the Syrian border killed nine civilians and 17 Islamic State militants, while a separate bombing west of Baghdad killed 11 civilians and six militants. The Pentagon has also announced a shipment of 10,000 U.S. M16 rifles and other military supplies to Iraq this week, as U.S. troops train Iraqi forces for an operation this spring to try to retake Iraq’s second-biggest city, Mosul, from Islamic State militants.

AMYGOODMAN: Meanwhile, UNESCO is condemning the Islamic State for destroying the Mosul public library, which housed more than 8,000 rare books and manuscripts. UNESCO described the incident as, quote, "one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history." Earlier today, video was posted online that appears to show members of the so-called Islamic State smashing ancient artifacts inside a Mosul museum. The video shows men toppling statues and using sledgehammers and drills to destroy the artifacts. The Guardian reports one of the statues destroyed was a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 9th century B.C.

We go now to Iraq, where we’re joined by Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent. His latest book is titled The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution. One of his recent articles from Iraq is headlined "Private Donors from Gulf Oil States Helping to Bankroll Salaries of Up to 100,000 ISIS Fighters." Last year, he received the Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year Award in England. He joins us now from Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Why don’t we go right to the headline of that piece, Patrick? Talk about who is funding the self-proclaimed Islamic State?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: It looks as though the Islamic State has much more money than it ought to have. It’s raised certainly 100,000, and getting on over 200,000, soldiers. They’re all being paid. It’s introduced conscription. It recently lowered the age of conscription below 18. If you join up, you don’t get much. You get $400 a month. If you’re a foreign fighter, you’ll get $800 a month and your keep. But this is a pretty large army they’re putting in the field, and they don’t have many sources of revenue. They have some oil. They have some taxes. So, there’s a great big gap there, which senior Kurdish officials and officials in Baghdad have told me they’re convinced come from private donors in the oil states of the Gulf. That’s the only real explanation for that.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, Patrick Cockburn, you’ve been talking to people who have been fleeing Mosul, the city that’s now entirely controlled by the Islamic State. Could you explain what people have been saying about what conditions are like there?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: The conditions are pretty grim. There’s a shortage of electricity. There’s a shortage of clean water. That’s so bad that lots of people are in hospital with various complaints, illnesses, because of eating dirty water. There’s executions. Women forced to wear the niqab, so everything is covered, but one woman whose eyes weren’t quite covered was taken to a police station and was forced to bite on a sort of donkey or horse’s bit, that you put in the mouth of a horse, and to bite so hard until there was blood all over her mouth, and she had to go to hospital. So, it’s pretty vicious.

But one should also say two things. One, that the Sunni Arabs in Mosul are very frightened of ISIS, what they call DAESH, of ISIS, but they’re also very frightened of the idea of the Iraqi army or the Shia militias capturing Mosul. So, they don’t really know which way to go. I was talking this morning to some people in a refugee camp here in Erbil who had left Mosul because their parents had been in the Iraqi police force. And what happened was that they had fled Mosul, but then ISIS goes to their houses and blows them up and then puts the video of the explosion on the social media, so the—saying this is a message to even people who have fled, that they’re blowing up their houses.

NERMEENSHAIKH: So, Patrick Cockburn, given the brutality that you’re describing, why is it that people are, in some cases, as you say, equally scared of the Iraqi military taking over?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: Because every place that the Shia militia and the—it’s mostly—the main fighting force of the Baghdad government at the moment is not the Iraqi army. The Iraqi army has actually failed to take back any city in Iraq or town in Iraq since the beginning of last year, since Fallujah fell to ISIS. But the Shia militia, that probably have about 120,000 men—the Iraqi army probably has about 40,000 to 50,000—where they take over cities or towns, they haven’t taken many, but were they have taken them over, or villages, they treat all the inhabitants, if they’re Sunni Arabs, as if they were members of ISIS. It doesn’t matter if these people are completely opposed to ISIS: They’re still treated as members of ISIS. So the young men disappear. In some cases, they’re killed. In some cases, they’re tortured or put in prison. So, houses are burned. People are driven out.

And there’s one other point, a very important one, I’d like to make, which I don’t think people have taken on board. As you know, that the U.S. government, the Pentagon and the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, have said there’s going to be an offensive to capture Mosul. But the major relief organizations, the World Food Program, believe that if there’s an attack on Mosul, there’s going to be an exodus of up to a million refugees, of basically the Sunni Arabs who live in Mosul, that they’re going to flee the city when airstrikes intensify and they believe it’s going to come under attack. At the moment, they couldn’t get into the Kurdish region. They’re banned. So they’re all going to be on the road. So, they’re pre-positioning supplies for one of the biggest exodus of refugees that we’ve seen, I don’t know for how long. But it’s going to be massive. There’s going to be terrible suffering, and many will die.

AMYGOODMAN: Already the self-proclaimed Islamic State controls a swath of land that covers millions and millions of people. Is the Islamic State going to last? And also, if you could respond to this latest identification, supposedly, of the man that has been called "Jihadi John," who stands in the video as he was about to execute, for example, the American journalist James Foley—the Kuwaiti-born Mohammed Emwazi. British security said that they were following him. The significance of this? Three arrests in Brooklyn—these young people were supposedly going to join up with Islamic State in Syria. The three girls in Britain, the young women who supposedly have gone to join. Can you put all of this together?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: Yeah, I mean, there are about or said to be 20,000 foreign jihadis who have gone to the Islamic State. One of the amazing things is that they’re still quite easily able to cross the Turkish frontier into Syria to—into the Islamic State, despite the fact that Turkey is meant to be part of the coalition to eliminate the Islamic State. But there’s a 500-mile border between Syria and Turkey, and it still seems to be generally open.

Now, when these foreigners arrive in the Islamic State, they’re often not much good as fighters, because those from western Europe and America don’t speak Arabic. Even those that do are not professional soldiers. So they often become suicide bombers, or they’re given particularly sort of high-profile jobs for execution and so forth.

But the Islamic State is very obsessed, almost, with the idea of dominating the news agenda, and it doesn’t really matter how they do it. So they know that if you have a Japanese hostage and you demand $200 million ransom, that that’s going to be leading the news. For a long time, cutting off people’s heads led the news. Then that—people became used to that, so they burn to death this Jordanian pilot in a cage, knowing again that will dominate the news, will be assertion of their strength. And they do that particularly when they’ve had a military setback. When things aren’t going too well on the battlefront, they want the news to be dominated by some assertion of power on their part, which may be a hideous atrocity, usually is, but they feel they’ve achieved their aim if that’s what everybody’s talking about. They said at one moment on their social media that media is half jihad. So it’s something they do very consciously, and it’s something they use, particularly foreigners entering the Islamic State, as a method of publicity.

AMYGOODMAN: And will they last? Patrick Cockburn, will they last, do you think, Islamic State? And what do you think should be done?

PATRICKCOCKBURN: Will they last? Well, at the moment—last year, they had a 100-day campaign in which they captured an area which is larger than Great Britain. They defeated the Iraqi army. They defeated the—inflicted defeats on the Syrian army, massive defeats on the Kurds, the Iraqi Kurds, on almost everybody else. Since then, they haven’t been quite so successful against the Syrian Kurds and others, but they control pretty well the same area. And they’re recruiting vast numbers of people. I was at the battlefront here west of Erbil yesterday, and I was talking to a commander. And although he said that ISIS was losing a lot of men in attacks they had been making, they’ve still been able to recruit people and recruit people from the local area. I think, abroad, people get the impression somehow it’s all foreign jihadis. Actually, it isn’t. It’s mostly Syrians and Iraqis. And there are at least six or seven million people within the confines of the Islamic State. And if you’re calling up all the young men, you can put a very large army into the field.

Now, to defeat them, we have the Iraqi army here. But as I said earlier, the Iraqi army has not recaptured a single city or town since January last year. So talk of them defeating the Islamic State, of taking Mosul, taking these other cities, looks pretty optimistic. In Syria, the Syrian Kurds are fighting pretty hard. They’ve been advancing. That’s one of the reasons that these poor Assyrian Christians have been kidnapped by Islamic State. They’re supported by U.S. airstrikes. But that only really happens where there are a lot of Kurds in Syria, which is not that big. In the rest of Syria, it’s very noticeable the U.S. airstrikes are not against the Islamic State where it is combating the Syrian army. So, the pressure is there, but it’s not sufficient to defeat the Islamic State, to my mind. And the Islamic State’s many enemies are all there, but they’re disunited, and they distrust and hate each other almost as much, or if not more, than they hate the Islamic State.

AMYGOODMAN: Patrick Cockburn, we want to thank you for being with us, Middle East correspondent for The Independent. His latest book, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution. We’ll link to your article, "Private Donors from Gulf Oil States Helping to Bankroll Salaries of Up to 100,000 ISIS Fighters."

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Thu, 26 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500Endless War? Obama Sends Congress Expansive Anti-ISIS Measure 6 Months After Bombing Beganhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/12/endless_war_obama_sends_congress_expansive
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-12:en/story/01c3db NERMEEN SHAIKH : President Obama has sent Congress a formal request to authorize military force against the Islamic State six months after the U.S. began bombing Iraq and Syria. The resolution imposes a three-year limit on U.S. operations, but it does not put any geographic limits on the military campaign. It also opens the door for ground combat operations in some circumstances. Obama spoke at the White House Wednesday, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : Today my administration submitted a draft resolution to Congress to authorize the use of force against ISIL . I want to be very clear about what it does and what it does not do. This resolution reflects our core objective: to destroy ISIL . It supports the comprehensive strategy that we&#8217;ve been pursuing with our allies and our partners: a systemic and sustained campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria; support and training for local forces on the ground, including the moderate Syrian opposition; preventing ISIL attacks in the region and beyond, including by foreign terrorist fighters who try to threaten our countries; regional and international support for an inclusive Iraqi government that unites the Iraqi people and strengthens Iraqi forces against ISIL ; humanitarian assistance for the innocent civilians of Iraq and Syria, who are suffering so terribly under ISIL&#8217;s reign of horror.
AMY GOODMAN : Questions over the language in the resolution have been raised by both hawkish Republicans and antiwar Democrats in Congress. The resolution&#8217;s broad language covers military action against the Islamic State as well as, quote, &quot;individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside [ ISIS ] or any closely-related successor entity in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.&quot; The resolution also leaves in place the open-ended Authorization for Use of Military Force Congress enacted one week after the September 11th attacks, which has been used to justify U.S. action in Somalia, in Pakistan, in Yemen and beyond.
Joining us now from San Francisco is Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, co-founder of RootsAction.org , author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death .
Norman, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about this latest effort by President Obama to get war authorization?
NORMAN SOLOMON : Well, unfortunately, in political terms, it represents a sort of repetition compulsion disorder, back to the future from an administration that came in saying it was going to dispense with the concept—or at least the phraseology—of a war on terror, an administration that even today, through the president&#8217;s statement, is again asserting that it&#8217;s against endless war, and yet both the statement from the president yesterday and the resolution—and, for that matter, the White House policy—is explicitly endless, perpetual war. And that&#8217;s the kind of policy we&#8217;re getting.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, Norm, can you explain why he placed a three-year limit then on U.S. operations?
NORMAN SOLOMON : Window dressing, just a scam, just a way to give a sort of a fig leaf to the people called antiwar Democrats or some libertarian Republicans. But it&#8217;s just a way of sort of rowing the boat with a little bit of a deference to the right and left in Congress, that what it boils down to is kicking the war can down the road—a very bloody one, to put it mildly—and absolutely running a manipulative public relations campaign.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re hearing numbers like there are 200,000 members of ISIS , or people fighting, identifying themselves as ISIS . This number has just gone up astronomically. Is there any way to verify the kind of information that comes out at a time like this, when war is being voted on in Congress?
NORMAN SOLOMON : Well, historically, and in the present day, there is no way to verify whatsoever. You could depend on some inflation, to put it mildly. We also heard from the president yesterday that there were 2,000 airstrikes by the United States in the region, in the Middle East, in the last six months, but we don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s true at all. And in tandem with its war on whistleblowers and true investigative journalism, this administration is operating in overdrive as sort of a fog machine to try to keep from the American people realities of the war policy, because clearly this White House prefers the uninformed consent of the governed.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Norm, could you comment on the timing of Obama&#8217;s request? It came just a day after American aid worker Kayla Mueller&#8217;s death was confirmed. He also mentioned her in his remarks.
NORMAN SOLOMON : Well, these terrible atrocities by the so-called Islamic State really provide fuel for the machinery of propaganda from the executive branch of the United States, clearly chomping at the bit to drag this country further into war. And I think it&#8217;s very symbolic that—and literally significant, as well—that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force is not being challenged or proposed for ending by this administration. So, that very open-ended authorization right after 9/11 is one that the administration is embracing and trying to ride for all it can, essentially, in search of enemies. And if there are no geographical or conceptual or state boundaries that will define this war coming out of the U.S. government, then the search for enemies is open-ended and infinite.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to turn to Kofi Annan—
NORMAN SOLOMON : And I should add, not only a search for enemies that&#8217;s infinite, but the creation of enemies, because this administration not only preaches against endless war while doing more than any other presidency to make endless war policy, but this administration is second to none in creating enemies of the United States around the world. And so the spin cycle, the war cycle, the destructive cycle continues.
AMY GOODMAN : Norman Solomon, I wanted to turn to the former U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan. Over the weekend, he spoke at the Munich Security Conference, suggesting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq created the Islamic State.
KOFI ANNAN : The second and much more proximate cause of the instability we are witnessing today was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I spoke against it at the time, and I&#8217;m afraid my concerns have been proved well-founded. The folly of that fateful decision was compounded by post-invasion decisions. The wholesale disbandment of security forces, among other measures, poured hundreds of thousands of trained and disgruntled soldiers and policemen onto the streets.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Norman Solomon, your response?
NORMAN SOLOMON : It&#8217;s a good point, but when you go back to that time—and I think, Amy, you and I spoke about the impending invasion of Iraq, you know, more than a decade ago—Kofi Annan could have been much stronger in his post at the United Nations in opposing it. And frankly, there are all too many people in Washington, as well, who in retrospect say what terrible tragedies are or have unfolded, but at the time, they don&#8217;t have a whole lot of backbone, they don&#8217;t challenge the administration. And years from now, we&#8217;re going to have people who were in Congress right now who will say what a terrible tragedy yesterday&#8217;s statement and offered resolution from the Obama White House was. But right now, we&#8217;re not hearing them speaking out very strongly. And it&#8217;s incumbent on all of us to speak out and stop this despicable push towards escalation of yet more war from the Obama White House.
AMY GOODMAN : Norman Solomon, we&#8217;re going to break and then come back to ask you about the suspension of Brian Williams for lying about Iraq, and we want to talk to you about the Sterling trial. Then we&#8217;re going to go on to talk about what happened in North Carolina near the University of North Carolina, the three young students, two sisters and one of their, well, new husband, who were just gunned down, the police say over a parking spot, their family says it&#8217;s hate crime. Stay with us. NERMEENSHAIKH: President Obama has sent Congress a formal request to authorize military force against the Islamic State six months after the U.S. began bombing Iraq and Syria. The resolution imposes a three-year limit on U.S. operations, but it does not put any geographic limits on the military campaign. It also opens the door for ground combat operations in some circumstances. Obama spoke at the White House Wednesday, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: Today my administration submitted a draft resolution to Congress to authorize the use of force against ISIL. I want to be very clear about what it does and what it does not do. This resolution reflects our core objective: to destroy ISIL. It supports the comprehensive strategy that we’ve been pursuing with our allies and our partners: a systemic and sustained campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria; support and training for local forces on the ground, including the moderate Syrian opposition; preventing ISIL attacks in the region and beyond, including by foreign terrorist fighters who try to threaten our countries; regional and international support for an inclusive Iraqi government that unites the Iraqi people and strengthens Iraqi forces against ISIL; humanitarian assistance for the innocent civilians of Iraq and Syria, who are suffering so terribly under ISIL’s reign of horror.

AMYGOODMAN: Questions over the language in the resolution have been raised by both hawkish Republicans and antiwar Democrats in Congress. The resolution’s broad language covers military action against the Islamic State as well as, quote, "individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside [ISIS] or any closely-related successor entity in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners." The resolution also leaves in place the open-ended Authorization for Use of Military Force Congress enacted one week after the September 11th attacks, which has been used to justify U.S. action in Somalia, in Pakistan, in Yemen and beyond.

Joining us now from San Francisco is Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, co-founder of RootsAction.org, author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

Norman, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about this latest effort by President Obama to get war authorization?

NORMANSOLOMON: Well, unfortunately, in political terms, it represents a sort of repetition compulsion disorder, back to the future from an administration that came in saying it was going to dispense with the concept—or at least the phraseology—of a war on terror, an administration that even today, through the president’s statement, is again asserting that it’s against endless war, and yet both the statement from the president yesterday and the resolution—and, for that matter, the White House policy—is explicitly endless, perpetual war. And that’s the kind of policy we’re getting.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, Norm, can you explain why he placed a three-year limit then on U.S. operations?

NORMANSOLOMON: Window dressing, just a scam, just a way to give a sort of a fig leaf to the people called antiwar Democrats or some libertarian Republicans. But it’s just a way of sort of rowing the boat with a little bit of a deference to the right and left in Congress, that what it boils down to is kicking the war can down the road—a very bloody one, to put it mildly—and absolutely running a manipulative public relations campaign.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re hearing numbers like there are 200,000 members of ISIS, or people fighting, identifying themselves as ISIS. This number has just gone up astronomically. Is there any way to verify the kind of information that comes out at a time like this, when war is being voted on in Congress?

NORMANSOLOMON: Well, historically, and in the present day, there is no way to verify whatsoever. You could depend on some inflation, to put it mildly. We also heard from the president yesterday that there were 2,000 airstrikes by the United States in the region, in the Middle East, in the last six months, but we don’t know if that’s true at all. And in tandem with its war on whistleblowers and true investigative journalism, this administration is operating in overdrive as sort of a fog machine to try to keep from the American people realities of the war policy, because clearly this White House prefers the uninformed consent of the governed.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Norm, could you comment on the timing of Obama’s request? It came just a day after American aid worker Kayla Mueller’s death was confirmed. He also mentioned her in his remarks.

NORMANSOLOMON: Well, these terrible atrocities by the so-called Islamic State really provide fuel for the machinery of propaganda from the executive branch of the United States, clearly chomping at the bit to drag this country further into war. And I think it’s very symbolic that—and literally significant, as well—that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force is not being challenged or proposed for ending by this administration. So, that very open-ended authorization right after 9/11 is one that the administration is embracing and trying to ride for all it can, essentially, in search of enemies. And if there are no geographical or conceptual or state boundaries that will define this war coming out of the U.S. government, then the search for enemies is open-ended and infinite.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to turn to Kofi Annan—

NORMANSOLOMON: And I should add, not only a search for enemies that’s infinite, but the creation of enemies, because this administration not only preaches against endless war while doing more than any other presidency to make endless war policy, but this administration is second to none in creating enemies of the United States around the world. And so the spin cycle, the war cycle, the destructive cycle continues.

AMYGOODMAN: Norman Solomon, I wanted to turn to the former U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan. Over the weekend, he spoke at the Munich Security Conference, suggesting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq created the Islamic State.

KOFIANNAN: The second and much more proximate cause of the instability we are witnessing today was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I spoke against it at the time, and I’m afraid my concerns have been proved well-founded. The folly of that fateful decision was compounded by post-invasion decisions. The wholesale disbandment of security forces, among other measures, poured hundreds of thousands of trained and disgruntled soldiers and policemen onto the streets.

NORMANSOLOMON: It’s a good point, but when you go back to that time—and I think, Amy, you and I spoke about the impending invasion of Iraq, you know, more than a decade ago—Kofi Annan could have been much stronger in his post at the United Nations in opposing it. And frankly, there are all too many people in Washington, as well, who in retrospect say what terrible tragedies are or have unfolded, but at the time, they don’t have a whole lot of backbone, they don’t challenge the administration. And years from now, we’re going to have people who were in Congress right now who will say what a terrible tragedy yesterday’s statement and offered resolution from the Obama White House was. But right now, we’re not hearing them speaking out very strongly. And it’s incumbent on all of us to speak out and stop this despicable push towards escalation of yet more war from the Obama White House.

AMYGOODMAN: Norman Solomon, we’re going to break and then come back to ask you about the suspension of Brian Williams for lying about Iraq, and we want to talk to you about the Sterling trial. Then we’re going to go on to talk about what happened in North Carolina near the University of North Carolina, the three young students, two sisters and one of their, well, new husband, who were just gunned down, the police say over a parking spot, their family says it’s hate crime. Stay with us.